Bitter or Sweet
by Demon To Be
Summary: Noelle LeBlanc isn't a Winchester, but taking a bite of the Forbidden Fruit, thereby earning yourself the number one spot on every angel and demon's wanted list, and getting stuck with Team Free Will is a very Winchester-y thing to do. Dean/Cas
1. Parseltongue

Author's Notes: Well, this is awkward. I haven't written fanfic in going on three years now, but here I stand. My original fic' is faring poorly, so I jumped on my favorite band-Impala to kick the words back into my brain. I hope you folks enjoy.

**CONTAINS:**** Dean/Cas (you know you love it), probably some sexin', possibly mentions of rape, probably not actual rape (although with me, who the hell knows), blatant fangirling, and be warned: one of the main characters is an OC. Please don't murder me.**

**OTHER NOTES:**** This takes place after the events of season 6, episode 9: Clap Your Hands If You Believe. That means a lot of soulless!Sammy, a lot of angsty!Dean, and a lot of lost-puppy!Cas (my second-favorite Cas, right after beating-the-shit-out-of-Dean!Cas). It's inevitable that this is going to turn into an AU, probably before I post it, but only insofar as the literal events of the show are concerned.**

**SUMMARY:** **When Noelle LeBlanc takes a bite of the Forbidden Fruit, thereby making her a valuable weapon and target for angels and demons alike, the brothers Winchester find themselves with another passenger. Cas takes a temporary break from Heaven to help keep her safe and develop her newfound powers. But Noelle has trouble trusting Sam, no one wants to answer her questions, the eyesex between Dean and Cas is making her want to knock their heads together, she's sick of shitty diner food, and just who is this Crowley guy, anyway…?

* * *

**

_Take the fruit from the tree,_

_Break the skin with your teeth_

_Is it bitter or sweet?_

_All depends on your timing_

_-_Bright Eyes, "Cleanse Song"

* * *

_  
_

"An _apple_?"

Castiel's more human tendencies had faded nearly out of recognition after his return to Heaven and the miserable duties all of it entailed – the betrayal by his brothers and sisters, the weakening and ever-depleting numbers of angels who followed him, the numerous attempts on his immortal soul – and yet he still found himself slightly annoyed at Dean's tone. It suggested to him that he, Dean, felt that Castiel had no idea what he was talking about. The emotion, annoyance, it was welcome, though Castiel wouldn't admit it to Dean (that was another thing; his pride had returned, a thing he had never even come close to understanding before his own fall). It felt… _correct._ Here he was, here was Dean, Dean said something with that sarcastic edge to his voice, and Castiel was annoyed. It was right. That was how it should be.

"Yes," said Castiel. "An apple. From the Tree of Knowledge. I assume you're familiar with it?"

"I read the Cliffs Notes," said Dean… whatever that meant.

"So, how'd it get to Red Hook, Cas?" asked Sam, who wasn't correct at all. This was not the Sam Winchester for whom Castiel had stood up to Anna, had literally died. Crowley had that part of Sam Winchester locked away in the Cage, along with Lucifer, Michael, and the extremely unfortunate Adam Milligan.

Castiel glanced at the floor. "I assume it was one of my brothers, rather like Balthazar and the Staff of Moses."

"Awesome. So, what's this apple do, Cas?" asked Dean. "They're not exactly an untradeable substance anymore. You can get 'em anywhere."

"Not this one, as I said, it comes directly from the Tree of Knowledge," repeated Castiel impatiently. "The fruit of that tree contains information that would throw off any semblance of balance I've managed to create in Heaven. Angels would kill to know the things any mortal who bites into the fruit would come to know. It would be dangerous for the one who the apple's come to, and it would be dangerous for all of us."

"Wait, wait," interrupted Sam. "The angels haven't read the Tree of Knowledge textbook?"

"It's Forbidden Fruit for a reason," growled Castiel. "God sent Michael down to destroy the tree after Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden—"

"Good old Mikey," said Dean.

"—_but,"_ continued Castiel, raising his voice, "one apple survived. And now it's come to this girl in… Red Hook."

The brothers Winchester and their guardian angel looked at the newspaper clipping on the coffee table in their motel room. The girl in the black-and-white picture looked no more than fifteen or sixteen. She was wrapped in the arms of a man of perhaps twenty-two, her small hands on his arm where it lay across her neck, both of them beaming into the camera. Were it not for the stubble on his face and the dimples in hers, their smiles would have been identical. According to the article, they were Noelle and Christian LeBlanc, brother and sister, orphans and heirs to LeBlanc Orchards in Red Hook, New York ("That's upstate Red Hook, not Red Hook, Brooklyn," specified Dean with some disappointment as he read the article). LeBlanc and his sister had been driving their delivery truck to a farmer's market one state over when they were held up at gunpoint and forced out of the truck, which the attackers then searched. Miss LeBlanc, who was in fact eighteen, despite her youthful countenance, had shakily recounted how they scattered the apples across the road, searching every last bushel, and after failing to locate whatever it was they had been looking for, shot her brother in the leg. Afterwards, the article continued, two women had appeared, shaken a circle of salt around the two siblings, and fought off the attackers with, Miss LeBlanc swore, an old Latin book. The article cited Miss LeBlanc's considerable distress and subsequent hallucinations before going on to describe the "pitch-black eyes" of the attackers and how they "screamed and vomited smoke" upon the completion of the Latin phrases. The two women had stayed with the LeBlanc siblings, binding the brother's leg with a tourniquet, until the paramedics came and then vanished before the ambulance left. Mr. LeBlanc, unfortunately, had died on the way to the hospital, and Miss LeBlanc was being held in a private psychiatric facility for observations.

"Another nuthouse," groaned Dean.

"The last one wasn't that bad."

"Easy for you to say, they shot _you_ full of happy juice, didn't they?"

"Dude, sometimes the way you phrase things—"

"Shut up, Sam."

Castiel wanted to travel by his usual method of distorting space, but Dean insisted they drive. "Suck it up," were his exact words, "you're not beaming me anywhere, Scotty."

"It's only three hours away," added Sam as he reached out to open the passenger seat door of the Impala, but Dean gave a short whistle through his teeth and jerked his thumb towards the back. "Oh, come on, Dean."

"Nuh-uh, soulless Sam sits in the back and nerdy angel sits in the front. New car rules. Cas, you coming?"

"Oh. Of course." Castiel sat beside Dean as he started the engine. He didn't care for the brothers' respective states of mind – or for the fact that he had the next three hours spend driving in a car to look forward to. Sam's malady was curable, of course: retrieve his soul from Crowley, and he would be Sam Winchester again, albeit Sam Winchester with severe regrets, because the Sam Castiel knew would be horrified at the deeds of the current Sam. Dean, however… was tricky. As he always had been. Always in danger of falling into one of his periods of black despair, Dean missed his brother, that much was plain to see. And bad things seemed to happen every time one of the Winchester brothers was unhappy.

"I have some other rules too. About this case."

"Fire away, Jiminy," said Sam, his tone sounding bored. Castiel had given up trying to figure out what new ironic-sounding nickname one brother called the other at any given time actually meant, but he did wonder if the monotony suggested by Sam's voice was present simply because of the lack of his soul, or something worse. The simple fact that something worse existed was enough to make Castiel wish that he were not the one with the weight of the world on his shoulders, that one of his brothers or sisters had been saddled with this wretched responsibility and he could return to the humble position he had enjoyed before his superiors put him and the rest of the garrison on the case of removing one Dean Winchester from the Pit.

"_Don't_ sleep with her."

"Who, Eve?"

"Noelle," corrected Castiel.

"Yes. Her."

"Why not?"

"Do I really have to tell you why not?"

"Obviously, she's extremely unstable after the loss of her brother, if she's been placed under observation," said Castiel, frowning in Sam's direction. "You would be taking advantage of her."

"You see? If _Cas _of all people can figure out why it's wrong, you should at least be able to logic your way to the right answer."

"All right, all right," conceded Sam defensively. "I won't sleep with her. Problem solved."

"Yeah, it better be," grumbled Dean.

* * *

Noelle tried to put things into perspective. When her parents had died when she was fourteen and Christian eighteen, she had kept herself from drowning in tears by thinking, _At least I have my brother. At least I didn't lose Christian, too._ But now, without him, there was no _at least._ There was not even _at least I'm still alive._ Because when her parents died, she knew she would rather remain alive with Christian and love their mom and dad from the world of the living, but without him… there was no reason not to follow.

But that didn't merit being placed in a psychiatric ward. Noelle had tried to reason with her therapist – of course I'm not okay, I was held up in the middle of the night by guys with guns and I watched my brother die, but I don't need to be here, I suppose I must have been hallucinating that night but I'm _fine_ now, I know people's eyes don't turn black, I know people don't vomit smoke, but those two women were there, that I know beyond a doubt, the paramedics saw them too, I don't know if they actually read Latin to those men, I might have hallucinated that too, _can I please please please go now?_ But Dr. Taylor was insistent that she stay at least a few more days, to which Noelle reluctantly agreed, if for no other reason than the simple fact that putting up a fight might get her stuck here longer.

"You better not tell them about _me_," Ridley had said as she took a walk through the little courtyard the previous day. She had ignored him as any sane girl would ignore a talking snake, but he slithered after her. "You're not buying into their crap, are you, Noli?"

"Don't call me that," she muttered out the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, good, you are acknowledging me after all. Listen, dear, ignoring me won't make me go away. I'm as real as those men you saw that night."

"Go away. Leave me alone. If I have to have a nervous breakdown, can't I hallucinate something less _annoying?"_

"You are funny," said Ridley with what could have been a smile… if he weren't a snake. A snake, a fucking snake. A fucking _snake. _ Noelle had obviously lost her mind. Maybe she should just stay here in the hospital. "Not like some of those other humans. You can stop convincing yourself that I'll get lost if you keep giving me the cold shoulder, sweetie. If you need reassurance, I'll bite you and you can get treated for poison and _then _we can have our chat." The words would have been a lot more intimidating if he were longer than her forearm and thicker than her two fingers, but a lot less intimidating if he weren't a _talking snake._

"I'm not exactly doubting the fact that you're a snake, here, I'm doubting the fact that I'm having a conversation with you," she snapped – quietly, so no one would hear and decide to medicate her. She took a drag of the cigarette one of the nurses had had to light for her, not being allowed a lighter herself.

"You are. And even if you're not, I'm here, aren't I? Might as well hear what I have to say."

"God, I am so insane," she almost whispered.

"Not half as insane as I wish," said Ridley. "It would be a lot easier to deal with you. How about this, okay? I'll do you a favor."

"Oh?" Noelle crossed her arms over her chest, the misshapen gray sweatshirt pulling at her skin.

"Mm. You don't have to trust me just yet. In about, I don't know, forty-five seconds, two men are going to come into the waiting room and ask for you. They're going to say they're FBI agents, but they're not. One of them is freakishly tall, he'll be going by the name Richards, and the other one has a husky-sounding voice and he'll call himself Jagger. They're actually specialists in criminal insanity, and they're investigating whether or not you had a hand in your brother's death."

"They… I… Christian… _what?"_ demanded Noelle. "How could that possibly—"

"Noelle?" called the nurse who had lit her cigarette from the steps of the day room. "Hon, there are some men here to see you."

Noelle's blood ran cold. "I…"

"It won't take long, sweetheart."

Her legs shook slightly as she followed the nurse inside to the waiting room. A hand in Christian's death? How could Ridley – if he was real, if, _if, _she could absolutely not allow herself to lose sight of the fact that he might not be real – know that? But then, he had known they were coming, hadn't he? And she would have had no way of knowing that, so there was less of a chance than she'd thought that he was a hallucination. Which meant the black-eyed hijackers and their screaming smoky projectile vomit and the women shouting in Latin could have been real as well. _A hand in Christian's death…_

"Noelle," said Dr. Taylor, who was standing beside the two occupied chairs, "This is Agent Richards and Agent Jagger, they have a couple of questions for you."

A fresh wave of ice broke over her neck. And just as Ridley had said, the man calling himself Richards towered over the one called Jagger even as they sat.

"Of course," she said, her voice much higher-pitched than usual. "Thanks, Dr. Taylor."

He placed his hand on her shoulder before leaving her alone with them.

"So," said Agent Jagger – and Ridley was right about that too, his voice was deep and husky – "Noelle. We're so sorry about your loss."

"Thank you, Agent Jagger," she said softly. Specialists in criminal insanity, Ridley had said. She was questioning her sanity at this point, but surely they would be able to tell the difference between trauma and psychosis.

"We just wanted to ask you some questions about the circumstances," Jagger continued. "Can you describe the attackers for us?"

She cleared her throat softly, nervously. "Well, they were… there were four of them. One… I only remember one clearly, the one who… shot… Christian. He was wearing… jeans and work boots, and a… a North Face coat, I think… he had blonde hair."

"Did you notice anything strange about them, any unusual, uh, physical characteristics? Around the facial area, the eyes, maybe?"

Noelle's head shot up and she met Agent Jagger's eyes. He seemed nice enough. Maybe Ridley was lying. Or maybe she really was going crazy. "Uh… how… do you mean?"

"We know their eyes were black, Noelle," interrupted Agent Richards shortly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His stare made Noelle lean back in her seat; his own eyes looked dead. "We know they puked smoke after those two women read the Latin rites. We read the damn article. Why don't you describe that to us in a little more _detail_?"

"Richards," said his partner warningly.

"What – difference does it make?" she cried. "I was freaking out that night. I had a – momentary deterioration of coherency or whatever it's called – I was imagining things—"

"Where's the apple, Noelle?" said Richards.

"_Richards,"_ repeated his partner a little more firmly, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Would you cut her some slack?"

"They're scattered all over the turnpike!" snapped Noelle. "We don't even know what they were looking for."

"What my partner _means,"_ said Agent Jagger, "is… did they seem interested in the apples? Did they maybe examine them before they tossed them out of the truck?"

"Y… yeah," said Noelle, frowning. "How did you know that? It wasn't in the paper."

"We think something extremely valuable was hidden in one of them," explained Jagger.

"In my… apples?" Noelle asked blankly, pretending not to notice the suggestive twitch of Agent Richards' eyebrows. Pervert. Jagger looked like he was about to slug him.

"Yes."

"What?"

"I can't tell you – breach of security and everything. So, did they look like they'd found anything?"

"No… no." Noelle shook her head. "They were… they…"

—The blonde in the workboots turned to Christian, who had shoved Noelle behind him the instant they'd been pulled from the cab of the truck. "Where is it, Christian?" he asked.

"I don't know wh—"

_Bang!_

Christian screamed, a long, ragged howl like an animal, collapsing to the pavement in front of her. Noelle didn't scream, though she wanted to, but there were more important things to do, help Christian, Christian had been shot, she could panic later, later, _later,_ but not now. Christian had been shot. Dear god. The blood pooled around his knee and the scream didn't stop. With clumsy fingers, she started to undo his belt so she could cinch it around his leg to staunch the blood, but the other one, the one who was shorter than the blonde, hauled her up by her upper arm, away from Christian, and it was then that she screamed:

_"Let me help him, you're going to kill him!"_—

"No," she finished. "They didn't seem like they'd found anything."

"Obviously," said Agent Richards.

"You'll have to excuse my partner, he's suffering from terminal douche-itis," said Jagger casually. "Well, thanks for your help, Noelle."

"No… no problem," she replied, weak with relief – and confusion. Specialists in criminal insanity, huh? Figment of her imagination or not, Ridley was a lying sack of shit.

"Hang on, Dean," said Richards.

"Ugh, Sam—"

"Noelle, is there any possibility the particular apple we're looking for could still be at your orchard?"

"How should I know?" she asked, feeling her voice tighten with annoyance. "I didn't even know there was anything hidden in any of them. Who would have hidden something in one of our apples?"

"We're working on that. Your brother, though."

"What about my brother?"

"Is there any way he knew?"

"No, neither of us." Noelle crossed her legs at the knee and Richards' expression hardened even further. In a way, he was almost worse – almost – than the men who had attacked their truck and killed Christian. At least they were evil, reveling in evil, bursting with evil, but this Agent Richards was like a shell of a human whose every faculty except sarcasm and being a hard-ass had been removed. It was scary.

"I don't believe you."

"Okay, Richards, we're leaving," said Jagger, or had Richards called him Dean? He stood up and pulled his partner up with him, but the latter just took a step towards Noelle, who used her feet to push the chair back a few inches.

"You're hiding something from us."

"No, I'm not," she said, her pulse quickening. "I'll tell Dr. Taylor you're harassing me, Agent Richards."

"Oh, going to tattle on me?"

"Sam, I swear to god—" seethed Jagger.

"You know something," he said, quieter this time, leaning towards her.

"I _do not."_ Noelle stood up and looked at Agent Jagger. "May I _go,_ Agent?"

"Of course, Noelle," he said. "Thanks for your time."

Noelle spun on her heel and stormed out of the waiting room, but the two men were still within earshot when the soft _whump _of one striking the other's arm sounded and Jagger's voice raged in a whisper, "What the hell was that? What happened to letting me be your freakin' conscience?"


	2. The Unoriginal Sin

Author's Notes: Well, guys, I'm a total genius and I forgot about Christian Campbell when I originally named Noelle's brother. Again, genius. I blame the gap between the last episode and today's. Just so everyone knows, there's no obviously connection between them, they just have the same name. Also, I just watched today's _Supernatural_, and I TOTALLY CALLED Cas's "dude, Heaven sucks" sort of attitude. Although I don't really dig how they're using him primarily as a combination comic relief and deus ex machina… bleh. Chapter Two

As soon as the brothers returned to the motel room, Dean looking extremely irritated and Sam only mildly ill at ease, Castiel knew he had been right in suggesting he go with Dean to question the girl in Sam's place. "No offense, Cas," Dean had said when he voiced his idea, "but last time, it was a freaking catastrophe." Now, however, Castiel had a feeling it had been worse.

"So?"

"Boy Soulless Wonder here scared the girl half to death," Dean snapped. "That's _so."_

"She knows something she wasn't telling us," said Sam calmly.

"I'm sure there are more, ah, delicate ways of getting the information we need," said Castiel, glancing from Winchester to Winchester.

"What, another holy prostate exam?" Dean's words were clipped, disapproving; a rather painful reminder of all the soft humanity Castiel had been forced to give up over the past year, and Dean's awareness of it. "Yeah, that was delicate. You already did that to one kid, Cas."

"And _me_."

"Look, no regrets there, Pinocchio."

"No, I wasn't intending to do that," said Castiel, eyebrows joining. He was beginning to wonder how long he could keep placating Dean before he became sick of being treated like – well – the way he had always been treated by angels of higher rank than he. Their first reunion, post-Apocalypse, had been… strained. Castiel realized that now. He had forgotten the tenuous balance he had found between allowing himself to be in the world of the Winchesters and his duty to Heaven, but now, the latter was so pressing and so _big_, a much bigger job than Castiel had ever thought he would have to face, he had thrown himself headfirst into it because if he didn't, his precious Home would remain in shambles. But he had allowed that to get in the way of his friendship (and he had come to value it so highly as they fought off the Apocalypse) and he felt sorry for that, so he was utilizing that peculiar human tendency to kiss ass, to make up for it, to remain friends with Dean, to not get crushed under the weight of Heaven and Earth and his constant loneliness.

But it was getting irritating now.

"Well, then what were you going to do?"

"Question her without scaring her half to death?"

Dean blinked. "Oh. Yeah, that would work better." He reached into the minifridge and pulled out a bottle, twisting the cap off with his fingers. "So," he continued, "I say we go back tomorrow, get access to all her stuff to see if we can find it. Also, Sam was right about one thing – her brother could have known something. After our chat with Noelle tomorrow, let's hit the orchard and see what's there. And Cas – maybe you should keep your angel eyes on her for awhile. If we think she has the apple, someone from downstairs might have come to the same conclusion."

"You mean I should keep surveillance on her?" asked Castiel.

"Yeah, Huggy Bear, that's what I mean."

"Well, all right, but… isn't that creepy?"

Dean squinted. "We've done creepier, trust me."

* * *

Noelle curled up on her bed, hugging the duffel bag that had been salvaged from the truck to her chest – Christian's duffel bag. Having found nothing dangerous in it save the small knife Christian had evidently intended to use to cut up the apple the bag also contained, the hospital staff had returned it to her (after removing the knife and putting it with her lighter, assuring her that upon her release she would get it back). She now slowly picked through its contents, wrapping his old leather jacket around her shoulders, rolling the plump red fruit between her hands. It was comforting, a little shiny piece of home, complete with the small leaf still stubbornly clinging to the stem. If it wouldn't spoil, she would have kept it and just never eaten it, but that would be a waste. Noelle wanted out of this hospital. She was giving them two more days to release her, and then she was signing a seventy-two hour form if she had to, anything to _get out._ She was eighteen. It was perfectly legal, and perfectly practical. The orchard had to be looked after, and Christian had to be buried, and Noelle had to heal in the one place she could: the boughs of the tree furthest from their house, the one where Christian had taught her to climb.

A light weight seemed to drop in a coil on the bed behind her, and Noelle did not turn around. "So I'm going to act as if I'm fully convinced you're real and just hope to God I'm right," she mumbled into the sleeve of Christian's jacket. Ridley chuckled.

"I like you. I have since I met your brother."

Now she did roll over. He was a thin green garden snake, and he should not have been able to talk; mental faculties aside, snakes were physically incapable of speech. But here he was. "You knew Christian?"

"Yup. Liked him, too. He's the reason I came to you, my dear."

"He never told me," Noelle whispered.

"Would you have told him?" asked Ridley dryly.

"No, I… guess not."

Ridley was quiet for a few moments, allowing her to collect her thoughts. Then, "What if I told you I knew a way you could get your brother back?"

"Then I'd know beyond a doubt that I'm nuts," she replied, but her grip on the folds of Christian's jacket tightened so drastically the zipper bit into her palm.

"Look, it's really nice that you have such a tight hold on reality, toots, but it's getting annoying," said Ridley. "That apple you're holding _is _valuable."

"What—this is the one those guys were talking about? Oh, nice job on them, by the way," she added angrily. "Specialists in criminal insanity, my ass."

"Well, they _weren't _FBI agents, and I didn't want you to trust them," said Ridley, sliding over her wrist where it lay before her face to look into her eyes. His were slitted, bright green. "They would have stolen it from you, and then Christian would be gone for good. But take a bite of that apple, dear, and you'll be able to bring him back."

"Don't insult my intelligence," said Noelle. A wave of weariness, grief, and despair crushed down on her, drowning her; she'd been hit by similar waves a couple of times an hour during the forty-eight hours that had elapsed between now and Christian's death. She buried her face in the crook of her arm, smelling the old, worn leather. "Or tease me. I mean it."

"Darling," said Ridley, his tone turning silky, "what's the worst that could happen? You eat the apple, and it's completely normal and nothing changes. If I'm a hallucination, that is. But if not, you get your big brother back. What do you have to lose?"

Noelle didn't speak for a moment, but the snake had a point. What _did _she have to lose? And at least if she took the chance, she wouldn't have to spend the rest of her life wondering how things could have turned out if she had bitten the bullet, so to speak. She held it in front of her lips and spoke against its smooth skin. "If it's poisoned, you're a dead snake."

"It's not, Snow White. You have my permission to waste me if I'm lying."

"Oh, I would do it with or without your permission," she said, and sank a bite into it. The sweet juice was like nectar on her tongue, the flesh of it pleasantly firm and crisp, but as heiress to an expansive orchard, having grown up on it, she had eaten a lot of apples, and never one like this. It tasted alien to her, but divinely so.

But as soon as she swallowed, she knew something was wrong.

Noelle's head spun, her vision dissolving in a bright, celestial whiteness, and though her nerve endings were uncannily sensitive to every physical sensation, to the feeling of her body on the bed and Christian's jacket on her and the apple rolling from her slack fingers, she felt herself floating, rising upwards, to the ceiling, the sky. Sudden, violent vibrations shook the bed and a keening ring filled her ears to capacity as the light intensified, accompanied by a cacophony of shattering glass and splintering wood, a bellow of, _"You have no idea what you've done!"_ Noelle tried to scream, but before she could draw breath, two dry fingers pressed against her forehead and the white dissolved to black.

* * *

Castiel had been too late, but he had had the presence of mind to call Dean's cell phone and bark at him to prepare a devil's trap as soon as he peeked into the girl's hospital room and saw the serpent in her bed. Now it had been done – the girl had eaten the fruit.

Dean and Sam looked surprised as he flung the snake into the devil's trap and laid the girl on one of the queen-sized beds.

"The hell, Cas?" demanded Dean, jumping to his feet from where he'd taken a seat on the other.

"I didn't get there in time," he answered curtly, laying a hand on the girl's breast and closing his eyes, his grace sharpening to a fine point and carving the Enochian Sigil on her ribs as he had done to Sam and Dean after he died… the first time. She gasped in pain, but he ignored the sounds; the last thing they needed was the angels being able to track her to them. Or find her at all. "She took a bite. The damage is done."

"Shit," said Sam mildly. "So she had it. I was right."

"Yeah, your powers of intuition are unchecked. So what's with our new pet?" Dean indicated the serpent where it lay hissing within the devil's trap.

"A demon."

"A demon who can turn into a _snake?"_

That annoying, incredulous tone again. Castiel did not force the irritation from his voice, choosing instead to turn it onto their prisoner.

"You. Start talking."

"How did you know?" spat the serpent, coiling, and then standing, nude, as a man.

"How the fuck—?" began Dean, but Sam interrupted.

"Let me guess… you were a skinwalker in life."

The man nodded, smirking in his acid green eyes. The pupils were slits. "That's right. And you must be Sammy Winchester. Which makes you Dean, which makes _you _Castiel. You know, I don't know which of the three of you the demons would rip apart first, given the chance."

"Yeah, well, we aren't exactly the founders of the demon fan club either," said Dean. "You heard the angel. Talk. You got enough of those apples stashed away in the Pit, you're just handing them out now?"

"Hardly," replied the demon. "You know how long I had to search to _find _this chick? Hey, you mind giving me some clothes or something? I'm feeling a bit exposed here."

"Cas, give him your trenchcoat."

"I've become very attached to this trenchcoat," said Castiel, defenses prickled. "I suppose a human would say they'd feel naked without it." Dean shot him one of his looks that screamed without sound, _what the hell, you freak?_ "I'll go get a towel from the bathroom," Castiel amended.

When he returned and handed him the towel, the demon wrapped it around his waist, allowing a few pregnant seconds to go by, wherein Sam waited patiently with slightly cocked eyebrows and Dean's face grew darker. "We're listening," he snapped when the demon didn't speak.

His lip curled, revealing a slightly forked tongue. His host had a handsome face and a well-built torso – Castiel, during his few and brief glimpses of humanity over his lifetime, had always admired the physiques of humans who took care of their bodies as God had intended. It was the one of the more shallow reasons why he had chosen Jimmy Novak, a marathon runner as well as a man of God, over the two other potential vessels when he first came down to Earth.

"I've been hoarding that apple for centuries," said the demon nonchalantly. "You guys really fucked me over. I searched for years for this girl, or someone like her."

"So if Noelle here is so special," interjected Sam, "why did those other demons try to steal it from her instead of just grabbing her?"

"Because they are _morons_." Unnatural green eyes – a byproduct, Castiel had no doubt, of having spent years at a time in his serpent form – narrowed in distaste. "Didn't do their homework. Poor bastards had no idea they'd go up in flames if they so much as licked the thing."

Dean nodded, looking expectant. "Care to, uh, elaborate there?"

One corner of his thin mouth quirked upwards. "The vessel supply must be in dire straits, or Michael could have done so much better."

"If you're looking to defend Michael's honor, our little half-brother was actually his vessel. He's burning in Hell right now with Michael and Lucifer, take it up with him," said Sam with that same callousness that Castiel had come to find almost physically unpleasant – like when he had been cut off from the divine and, for all intents in purposes, human, and a too-loud noise went off too close to his head. It made his ears ring. He pretended not to notice the near-involuntary downwards jerk of Dean's head at the mention of Adam Milligan; that was called saving face, he was fairly certain.

"You Winchesters just can't stay out of the Pit, can you?"

"Can we arrive at the point?" Castiel asked, taking a step towards the devil's trap.

"Fine, fine, don't get your feathers in a wad." It never failed to astonish him how quickly demons and angels like Gabriel picked up the strangeness of human interaction, yet after a year in Heaven , Castiel felt like an amateur again. "So, _Dean,_ the Tree of Knowledge. It's like God's personal thought bubble – was, anyway. He felt that the information it contained was too tempting for His angels, so when He created the Garden of Eden, He planted the Tree there, among humans who He thought wouldn't be tempted."

"Yeah, good plan."

"Mm, that's what Lilith said."

"What?" Sam stood up from the bed, eyebrows joining. "Lilith?"

The demon looked delighted at the reaction. "Eve was not the original woman, Sam. Lilith was."

Castiel himself had found that out only months ago – it was nothing Heaven was proud of, and it had taken quite a lot of digging to learn – so he respected the stunned silence of Sam and Dean that followed. The latter, predictably, broke it: "Dude, you realize now that every time I get laid I'm going to picture _her?"_

"And she usually took a kid as a host, too," replied Sam. "Gross."

"Oh, god! No, Sam, I was thinking of her in the body of a hot chick, but _thanks."_

"May we please return to the subject?" asked Castiel, feeling his patience waver.

"Right. Yeah," continued Dean. "So… ugh, gross… so Lilith was the original woman, and?"

"Naturally, being created from the same clay as Adam, Lilith refused to be subservient to him," explained the demon. The name Lilith flicked off his tongue in a fittingly serpentine, slithery sound. "Her refusal to lie under him when they fucked got her tossed out of Paradise, can you believe it? Hence why she returned to Eden after becoming a demon, in the form of a serpent, and tempted Eve to begin with."

"The form of a serpent, what are you, her look-alike?"

"I was Lilith's first protégé," replied the demon smugly. "And you assholes offed her."

"I'm terribly sorry for your loss," mocked Dean. "But whatever, back to the apples. Back to why this girl was your prime target."

"Yeah, I was getting to that. Like I was saying, the Tree of Knowledge contains the wisdom of God Himself. Normal people would go insane if they ate the fruit. And demons, lamentably, would be destroyed."

"But then how come Adam and Eve didn't lose their minds?" asked Dean.

"They were the original Parents," Castiel explained. "Naturally, they could perceive angels in their true form; that ability didn't become such a rare gift for generations. If someone could see a true angel, it stands to reason they would be able to share the impressions of God's wisdom from the Tree."

"My, my, little Cas is all grown up," said the demon, grinning.

"I'm sorry, have we met?"

"No, not face-to-face, but I've heard a lot about you. Especially lately. Watching the houseplants while Daddy's away? I'm shocked He left the baby in charge."

"We're doing the asking here, pal." Dean took Castiel's shoulder and he pushed himself partway between Castiel and the demon. Castiel wondered if he realized consciously he was doing it. "I know you're all upset that we ganked your mommy, but focus here. So you've spent all this time looking for a human who can see angels naked?"

"They're harder to find than you might think," argued Castiel. "Even angels make mistakes."

"Yeah, Pamela being exhibit A."

"Precisely."

"But how do you know that Noelle can do it?"

"Because I let her see my true form outside her hospital room," replied Castiel. "I was hoping the shock would make her drop the apple, but she had already swallowed it."

"Jesus, Cas!" exploded Dean. "You could have fried her eyes, too!"

"It was a risk," Castiel growled, "I was willing to take. This was the last thing we needed, another tool for Hell and the _mockery _that passes for Heaven right now to fight over."

"She's my favorite tool so far," came Sam's casual voice. He had taken a seat at the desk and was looking at the girl's prone form on the bed where Castiel had lain her, ill-fitting gray sweats and all.

"Sam, for god's sake, keep it in your pants. Cas – ugh. You—" Dean rounded again on the demon, "what the hell's your name?"

"Ridley," replied he. He looked extremely amused at the scene taking place before him.

"Yeah. Ridley. So you gave her the apple."

"I gave it to her brother," Ridley corrected. "I had to get her into a state of mind where she'd believe me, didn't I? What better way to get her to bite the apple than to tell her it would bring her brother back?"

"So you planted it with her brother's stuff to get him killed."

"Mm."

"Jesus, couldn't you just have arranged a game of bobbing for apples or something? What exactly were you going to use her for once she'd bitten it, anyway?"

"Well, before your pet angel here fucked it up for me, I was _going _to… oh right, I don't owe you shit," Ridley said sardonically.

Castiel was, by now, extremely bored and extremely impatient. "How unfortunate for you," he said, laying his hand upon Ridley's forehead and with his grace, forcing the demon back into Hell. The vessel slumped out of the devil's trap. He was dead.

"What the hell?" demanded Dean.

"He had nothing more to tell us. I know what his plans were."

"And enlighten me, O King of Heaven."

"My guess is that he was going to use some of her new wisdom to undermine something upstairs," offered Sam. "Or sell her in exchange for whatever it is he's looking for, salvation, whatever, to either Crowley or some douchey angel. Am I right, Cas?"

"Something to that effect," muttered Castiel, shirking away from the image of his brothers and sisters doing the very thing Sam described – which he knew they were capable of. Not all of them, thank the Lord, but the sheer numbers of those who were…

"You're telling me," said Dean levelly, "that an angel would buy a kid off a demon in exchange for some fucking information?"

Castiel's patience snapped. He whirled around and seized Dean's collar in both hands, pushing him against the wall, that familiar, less-than-righteous fury making him act so human. "In case you've forgotten, Heaven is a corrupt, leech-ridden excuse for a Kingdom right now, Dean, so yeah, an angel would buy a kid off a demon, especially if that kid had information from the _fruit of the Tree of Knowledge!"_

Dean's eyebrows looked in danger of disappearing into his hairline. He looked surprised, but devoid of the note of intimidation Castiel had once inspired in him. It was infuriating.

A rustle from the bed made them both glance at Sam, who had stood and was now rummaging through the bag beside Noelle on the bed.

"Uh," said Dean. Castiel relaxed his grip on Dean's shirt. "What are you doing?"

"Checking to see if she has any Angel Midol."

Castiel didn't understand why that statement drew a reluctant laugh from Dean, but he ignored it, swallowing his pride and anger, and joined Sam at Noelle's side, placing his palm on her forehead. His grace nudged at her consciousness to wake her – nudged at _her _grace? Shocked, he withdrew his hand.

"What?" asked Dean, who was straightening his lapel. "She not waking up?"

"She has… a touch of angelic grace," said Castiel in disbelief. He thought back to all he had read during the past year as he tried to learn enough to become a suitable replacement for God until He came back. Nowhere had he come across anything about a mortal actually partaking of the fruit since Adam and Eve; perhaps it was a normal side effect. Perhaps it accounted for the longevity of the Biblical family. Perhaps the serpent Lilith had not been lying when she told Eve the apple would make her and Adam gods… or angels. Or something close to it.

"Like that half-demon kid from awhile back, only… half-angel?" asked Sam.

"No, no," replied Castiel, but his mind was on this girl, on Noelle, closing his eyes and exploring the strange grace softly humming within her. It was not pure, but it was there. It was _human_, but… it was there. "Angels… cannot reproduce, even if they take a vessel. The fruit has changed her."

"Well, great. Let's wake her up and find out what she learned in school today, huh?" Dean leaned against the wall, eyebrows raised as if to say, _Go on._

It was amazing. Even after being manhandled, Dean was still giving him orders. He felt foolish as he nodded, and again touched Noelle's forehead.

She opened her eyes sleepily, expression rapidly morphing from serenity to confusion to alarm to terror. The old mattress lurched as she jerked to a sitting position. "Where the _fuck _am I?" she demanded. "You—_you _two?"

"Surprise," Dean said, but without the usual sarcastic bite making the words sting. He was kindly trying to put her at ease. "Bet you weren't expecting this, huh?"

She only stared at him. Castiel could see the ancient sparkle in her eyes that did not belong there, could see even beyond her eyes as she struggled to process the precious and holy knowledge she now possessed. Her gaze flicked to the dead body on the floor, then to Dean, then, apprehensively, to Sam, and then finally to Castiel. Her brows creased slightly.

"You're the one who took me from the hospital," she said. "An angel?"

"And you're the one who ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," Castiel replied coldly. "A foolish mortal girl."

She covered her temples with her small white hands. "I feel…"

"Like you have access to all the forbidden wisdom of Heaven, thing not even the angels are permitted to—"

"Hey, hey, whoa," Dean slid between Castiel and Noelle, gently pushing the angel back a step. "Ease up on her, all right?"

"I don't understand," Noelle said, slowly drawing her legs against her body, the material of her dingy gray sweatpants tugging up past her ankles. She let her forehead fall onto her knees and pulled the leather jacket around her. "That apple was _the _forbidden fruit?"

"Yes," said Castiel. "You were tempted by the serpent."

"The serpent," she repeated, peeking up to look at the body of Ridley's host. "I see…" Her face fell. "He lied to me. He said I could bring my brother back, but I can't."

"She can't?" asked Dean.

Castiel shook his head. "No, she can't. It takes a great force to resurrect the dead, even for angels. And Noelle is no great force." He turned towards Noelle, feeling rather less contemptful than he had a few moments ago. "She knows that now. So that's why you succumbed."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't've if I knew," she mumbled into her knees. "I was half-convinced I was just going nuts."

"Stick around here for awhile, you'll be completely convinced" said Dean ironically. "So, Cas, what do we do?"

"I vote what he said," said Sam. "She should stick around."

"I don't follow you," said Dean, frowning. "Stick around with _us,_ and all the monsters and vampires and fairies we've been dealing with?"

"Fairies—?"

No one answered her. "Well," explained Sam, "she has some of that angel juice now, right? Cas flies up to heaven and leaves us out to dry every other case, we're trying to find the rest of the Staff of Moses and god knows what else—"

"I wouldn't count on that," muttered Castiel.

"—and we have to protect Noelle from killer demons. And angels. So it works out for all of us."

Castiel glanced at Dean. He could find little wrong with Sam's idea, except for the fact that it was Sam's idea. Which meant an ulterior motive. Dean seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "We have to protect Noelle," he repeated flatly.

"Well, yeah. You're the one with the soul, are we supposed to just _not _protect Noelle?"

"Suddenly the room smells like bullshit, Sam."

"It's not bullshit," insisted Sam. "I swear. It's purely selfish."

"And how's that?"

"It's how we'll have some extra angel mojo when we meet Crowley again," said Sam frankly. "All right? If Cas can't get my soul out of the Cage, maybe if he and Noelle put their wings together we can think of something."

Dean nodded slowly and pensively, to Castiel's general discontent (he didn't bother to remind them that Noelle did not have wings). It wasn't as if he were too lazy to try and retrieve Sam's soul; it was a literal impossibility, and the chances that Noelle could do it were very slim. She would know better than he, of course, but still… How many times had he fought off the temptation to leave Heaven to decay and come down to Earth? He had been nearly human last year, and at the time, his every thought and prayer had been directed to the restoration of his position, his sense of normalcy, his angelic duties and service, but all of that took place in the glory the Kingdom had once shone with, not the squalor defiling it now. If this new, divided Heaven was permanent, Castiel wasn't sure he wanted a part of it any longer. But he was fighting with all of his power to stop this before it became irreversible. If Dean only knew – but Castiel couldn't tell him. Even entertaining the choice between the Earth and his Home – and knowing which he would choose if he could not _save_ his Home – it was sinful and wrong.

"Can you think of anything better?" Dean asked him, drawing him from his thoughts.

"No," Castiel conceded reluctantly. "The safest place for Noelle is with you two. Bobby's is the first place they would look, or I would suggest we leave her there. Although I think I shouldn't… leave you out to dry… as often as I have been, if she's staying. Once the angels learn what's happened, I expect them to cause trouble upstairs to get me to leave you unprotected."

"Aw, I didn't know you cared so much."

"This is mostly for the sake of balance and order," Castiel shot back with a glare. "This could mean both sides teaming up, it would mean chaos and destruction. If the wrong angel, if Balthazar for example, got his hands on Noelle, all of the very _small_ amount of power I have in Heaven would be lost."

Dean nodded, accepting that. "Sounds good, Cas… so, Noelle, what's your take on all this? Mind staying with us until the angels' strike ends?"

Noelle's face had remained on her knees during this entire exchange, and only now did she lift her head to glance from brother to brother to angel, wet her lips, and ask, "Who are you guys again?"


	3. The Sigil

Author's Notes: I'm going to make a brief list of differences from canon so far, but I'm going to try to stick as closely as possible to canon. Spoiler alerts for last week's episode.

SAM'S SOUL: Canon, Cas tells Dean he wants Sam to survive, so pushing his "mangled soul down his gullet" is probably a bad idea. Here, Cas has more of Dean's mindset, which is "I don't care if he's a drooling, mumbling mess, I want Sam's soul back." I would try and get it closer to the canon, but the story sort of hinges upon everyone working together to get Sam's soul back.

DEATHS: Canon, Crowley has bitten it. Here, not so much. But I'm really excited to kill him if I get the chance.

MEG: I don't know, to be honest. Maybe? I haven't decided. I'll probably put her in a new host if I do decide to throw her in here. I don't know what it is about her current host, but she drives me nuts. She has since last season.

GRANDPA SOUP: I think I see him in the future. He's pretty much canon, just in different circumstances.

**Chapter Three**

It was hard to get used to everything, but the hardest things by far were the lack of Christian, the wisdom of God, sharing motel rooms with three complete strangers, and the numerous kidnap attempts. But nearly four days passed before those started.

In those four days, Noelle missed Christian so much she could hardly breathe. Sam, Dean, and Castiel had told her that it was thanks to Ridley that Christian had been murdered in the first place, that he had given Christian the apple specifically so he could be killed for it. She wished, when this was revealed to her, that Castiel hadn't sent the demon back to hell; she would have loved nothing more than to practice her new abilities on him. Because now she was alone, and she had never been alone. It was scary and it was cold and Christian was _dead._ And it was her fault.

When she felt the current of the bitter water she was drowning in start to pull her under, she tried to pull herself out of it by focusing on what was happening outside, as opposed to in her head. The problem was, however, that what was happening sucked. She was always either in the back of the Impala with Castiel, listening to bad music and getting pins and needles in her legs and trying to convince Dean to let her smoke in the car (he hadn't broken yet), undergoing simultaneous hunter and angel training, or in a sketchy motel room with the three of them. Sleeping became a chore; the grace within her made it extremely difficult to fall asleep and filled her dreams, once she had managed to pass out, with scenes of destruction, redemption, angels falling, sinners repenting, the glory of God before he disappeared and let the angels take care of everything, flashes of battles that refused to translate back out into her vision when she woke up, but it wasn't just that. It was also the fact that she was alone with three strange men, two of whom didn't sleep at all and one of those two lacked a soul. It wasn't utterly unbearable; Sam was on his best behavior, and Castiel usually disappeared for a few hours at a time to try and mediate the civil war going on above their heads, but the lack of sleep gave her headaches all day and she still had to do target practice and weapons drills with Sam, learn the various monsters, where they could be found, and how to kill them with Dean, and get a grip on her strange new powers with Castiel.

Training would have been difficult enough even if she had been getting a proper amount of sleep. She was an awful shot, as Sam frankly pointed out to her, and even though learning about all the horrors lurking in the world was fascinating, it was a lot of information to take in, and her mental faculties were quite occupied with the added burden of God's wisdom, which showed itself as recognizable thought after a great deal of concentration – or sporadically, when she least needed it. Angel training was the hardest, though. Castiel wasn't quite sure just how strong she was, so he quite overshot his estimation of her abilities at first. When he tried to teach her to teleport (he called it distorting space), she had blacked out for two hours and woken up with a bloody nose, after failing to move a fraction of an inch. Castiel had given her aspirin for the migraine that accompanied it, and told her that without wings, teleportation was much harder. If she was an angel-hybrid, she was more human than angel, much to the disappointment of Sam and Dean.

They had told her their story on the very day Castiel brought her to the motel room from the hospital, beginning with Dean's death several years ago and how Castiel raised him out of Hell to combat the Apocalypse. "Why were you in Hell?" she had asked, but no one seemed to want to answer her. "How did you die?" Dean just said, "It was all a big misunderstanding." She noticed that every time he mentioned the Sam who had still possessed a soul, he glossed over it as if it didn't matter, but it was plain to Noelle that Dean loved his brother very much. She realized later that night that he was trying to spare her feelings by avoiding the subject of brotherly love.

The whole story reminded her of the _Supernatural_ series by Carver someone-or-other; one of her friends in high school had been a huge fan. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she found that she knew not the author's pen name, but his real one: Chuck Shurley. A prophet of God, among several other names she just knew, as if they were burned into her brain. The _Supernatural_ books were the chronicles of Sam and Dean's lives. She wanted to read the series and get the whole story, not the stunted version told in alternating fragments by either Sam, Dean, or Castiel at any given time, but somehow, she knew that the brothers would prefer she never got her hands on the books.

On the fourth day after the Unoriginal Sin, as Dean had taken to calling it, Noelle was doing laundry at nine-thirty in the morning. Castiel's clothes never seemed to need washing (and it was a good thing, too, because according to Dean, he had been wearing the same clothes for three years), but Sam and Dean seemed to consider laundry a bi-monthly expense, so she had taken it upon herself to keep them from stinking. None of them really had much; the brothers had about five outfits between them, and Noelle had only taken the essentials from their brief and hurried detour to her family's house: ample underwear and socks, her fingerless gloves, two pairs of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a pair of boots, a couple of t-shirts, two hoodies, and Christian's leather jacket and favorite beanie hat. She had taken all of the money from both her bank account and Christian's, as well as the money left to them by their parents, and crammed the generous fistfuls of bills into a hidden zip compartment of her suitcase to avoid leaving a paper trail. Dean had assured her that they got by on credit card fraud, but Noelle preferred to carry her own weight, and it was for that reason that she had gathered up the brothers' dirty clothes and her own, pocketed a few bills, and after telling Sam where she was going, left for the laundromat.

As the clothes spun in the dryer, she sat cross-legged on top of it and listened to music on her iPod, a welcome reprieve from her new, strange life, and she had listened to nearly all of the discography Conor Oberst had to offer when from within her mind, Castiel's gruff voice mumbled her name. She looked up, half-expecting him to be there, and tried to answer, but she was absolute garbage at communicating telepathically with him, and when he did show up in front of her, he looked unhappy with her.

"At least I heard you that time," Noelle said brightly.

"You should not be here alone."

"Sam and Dean are right down the street."

"Regardless. It's still dangerous. You don't know how to defend yourself."

"I was going to lug Sam's flamethrower from the motel room, but I thought people might look at me funny." She hopped off the dryer.

"Have you got your holy water?"

Noelle tapped the bulge in her purse. "How are things upstairs?"

"In turmoil," Cas replied. Behind them, the bell rang as a man in his early twenties strode in, a mesh bag slung over one shoulder.

"Worse turmoil than usual?"

"No, not really."

"Well, good."

"I suppose." He put his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. "We're still no closer to finding the rest of the Staff of Moses, or getting Sam's soul back."

"Yeah, I'm excited to meet the real Sam," said Noelle. "But you should keep your voice down. Crowded public place and all that?"

"Right…" Cas looked so miserable Noelle wanted to give him a cookie or something.

"Look…" she started, "um, I realize you and the boys are dealing with me because it'd be trouble for you if I got snatched and not because of my dazzling good looks, but still – thanks. I can't really emphasize, but I've heard enough to realize that you've got a really shitty gig _without_ teaching me how to be part-angel."

Castiel paused for a moment. "Thank you, Noelle, you are…" He seemed to struggle for the right word and, not finding it, settled on, "nice."

Noelle blinked, pulling the clothes from the dryer, which had just stopped spinning, and stuffing them back into the backpack she'd used to get them there. "You're welcome."

"'Scuse me," called the guy with the mesh bag. He was across the room, by the washing machines. "Are you done with that dryer?"

She zipped the backpack and put it on, not bothering to look at the man as she replied, "Yeah, it's all yours."

His stubbly mouth smirked, eyes turning black. "And so are you." Noelle barely had time to start panicking when he held up another patron by her hair – a middle aged woman wearing an ugly sweater knit with cat silhouettes, eyes wide, terrified orbs below her glasses and mouth gasping in air, but not screaming – and, grabbing her wrist, pressed her palm to the sigil he had painted on the door of the washing machine beside him in her blood, which was smeared down the front of that hideous sweater. Castiel started to yell in pain as a bright light filled the laundromat, to the panic of the other customers, but the sound died away, and Noelle screamed as well; the light was like knives digging at her brain, at every inch of her body. It vanished and the pain dulled, but didn't go away, as she clutched at her head and threw her gaze about.

"Cas?" she cried. He had vanished.

"The things you learn during the Apocalypse," said the demon, grinning and dropping the woman, who burst into loud tears. "Oh, shut up!" he snarled, kicking her in the stomach. Noelle bit her lip at the thud, the choked gagging that followed.

"Stop it!"

"Make me," mocked the demon.

Noelle fumbled in her purse for the bottle of holy water, but the demon held up one palm and Noelle's hands froze before her as if he had bound her wrists. "Let me go!" Her breath was hitching as she stared into his eyes. Did all demons have the same black eyes? They were the same eyes that had mocked her as she screamed to be let go so she could save Christian's life, if he had let her go, Christian would be alive—

"No, you're way too valuable to just throw away." He pulled her closer and Noelle improvised, but poorly. She jerked one leg up nearly double against her body, bent at the knee, and brought it down on her purse, which was slung across one shoulder, with enough force to snap the strap and break the bottle inside, crushed between her foot and the floor. The water drenched the bag and the demon's legs, and, howling, he released her. Noelle grabbed the bag and shoved it into his face, forcing him to the floor, then clutched it to her chest and ran as fast as her legs could possibly take her, desperately sprinting back to the motel.

She had gone about a block when she realized he was pursuing her, and doubled her speed, thinking half in hysterics, _Please god, if I survive this I will quit smoking!_ A mailbox crashed across the sidewalk in front of her, and with a screamy half-sob, she leaped over it and kept running. Windows smashed before her, blowing broken glass onto her; she covered her face with her ruined purse. After what felt like an eternity, filled with his telekinetic attempts to trip her up, she slammed against the door of their motel room without bothering to slow down, and pounded on it.

"Sam! Dean! Open the fucking door, let me in, LET ME IN!"

She kept pounding until Dean finally did, and by that time, the demon appeared to have given up the chase. Noelle all but collapsed into the room, but jumped back to her feet, barely hearing Dean's exclamation of, "What the _hell,_ Noelle?"

"Demon – in the laundromat," she gasped, her breath refusing to return. "He did something, he made Cas disappear – shit, I barely – I barely got away – fuck, he hurt Cas, it was this bright fucking light, it was like being stabbed a million times, he had this old lady, this symbol I guess he drew in her blood—"

"Okay, okay, slow down," Dean said. "Get a grip and tell me what happened."

"Wouldn't our time be better spent leaving before he comes back?" asked Sam. "Did he follow you here?"

Noelle nodded, gulping down oxygen. "At least – I think he did. He was right behind me, I don't know why he ditched—"

"Reinforcements," said Dean. "Fuck. Sam's right, we gotta go."

"We can't!" Noelle cried.

"It's okay, Cas will be fine. He'll call us to find out where we are."

"No – it's not that… I… need to fucking smoke after that." Noelle dug in her purse for her cigarettes. It was wet and awkward to hold without the strap, and only then did she realize a shard of glass from the bottle had cut into her arm as she clutched it and ran back to the motel.

And the holy water had drenched her cigarettes.

_"Fuck!"

* * *

_

Noelle and the Winchesters had cleared New York and lodged in a motel in Connecticut when Castiel regained his faculties. He hung up the phone and with a flap of his wongs, folded space to join them, to Noelle's surprise.

"Hey, Cas," she said, wrapping her arms around him in relief, one of which was bandaged heavily both at the upper and forearm. He stood without moving, unsure how to respond, but she withdrew after only a few seconds. "God, I'm so glad you're okay – I had no idea what happened."

"I'm happy you got away," he replied, straightening his tie.

Dean looked up from the bed. "Hey, Cas."

"Hello, Dean. Did you explain the sigil to Noelle?"

"Yeah, she knows all about banishing angels. She didn't disappear like you did, though."

"No, she's far more human than angel," said Castiel, shaking his head. "I imagine it was less than pleasant, though."

"I thought my head was gonna explode," Noelle muttered.

"Cas can relate," said Dean. "Son of a bitch has exploded twice."

"Yes. It's unpleasant." Castiel turned to Noelle, who was brushing her short black hair. "I think I should teach you to exorcise demons."

"Yes, please," said Noelle weakly. "Is this a thing I should start getting used to? Is this going to keep happening?"

"Let's hope it's only demons that come after you," Castiel replied. "If the angels discover where you are, you'll almost certainly be taken, and Sam, Dean, and I killed."

"Long as we're forewarned," said Sam from the small kitchen, looking quite unperturbed, though Castiel noticed that any hint of color vanished from Noelle's face. "So, if we're all over out Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we might have a case in New Haven. Seven disappearances in seven days—first vic was seven, second was seventeen, third twenty-seven—"

"We get it, we get it, Lord Voldemort's tearing up New Haven," interrupted Dean loudly. "We'll go check it out."

"Can we eat when we get there?" Noelle asked, sounding weary.

"I like her. I'm glad she's here." Dean's face didn't seem to match up with his words; he was smiling, but his eyes were grim as he squeezed her shoulder and went past her to pack up their things. Noelle didn't reply, but grabbed her own suitcase.

"Cas?" she said. "Can you come wait in the car with me?"

"Uh." Unsure, he glanced at Dean, who shrugged. "Sure."

"Great." Noelle led the way out and shut the motel door behind them. "Why is Dean acting like I got killed? You're, well – you know, _you,_ and I didn't expect Sam to react one way or another, but I thought Dean would be happy I was okay. I'm still completely in the dark about all of you guys. You told me what happened, but you didn't tell me anything about you all, personally_._ You're basically all strangers to me, even after the past few days. And apparently I'm going to be with you for awhile. I'd really appreciate knowing more."

Castiel sighed, turning away from Noelle and gazing up at the sky. When he first walked the Earth, he had turned his eyes to Heaven to remind himself he was only here temporarily, but when he looked, he saw only the wasteland his Home had become. God was absent and his brothers were warring, but Dean was all right, and Sam would be, once they retrieved his soul, and Noelle was nowhere near as annoying as Castiel had anticipated. These reasons came together to form in his head a blasphemous love for the Earth; blasphemous because he loved it over Heaven at this point. And he would rather help get Sam's soul back and stay with Dean – with all of them –

"Dean compulsively blames himself for things that are not his fault," Castiel explained, speaking rather more loudly than necessary to drown out his own thoughts. "I'm certain he's now… kicking himself for not being able to spare you this experience. It was the same situation with Adam Milligan."

"The one who ended up Michael's vessel instead of Dean?" Noelle asked, reaching into her pocket. "Their half-brother?"

"Yes. I've been told Dean was hostile to him when they first met – well, when they met what they thought was Adam – because he wanted to deter him from pursuing the life of…" Noelle was placing a cigarette between her lips "…of a hunter, only now he can't be hostile to you, because—" the lighter was flicking as he spoke, distracting him "—because no one has a choice about you accompanying us – can I ask you a question?"

Noelle replaced the lighter in her pocket and exhaled smoke. "Sure."

"Why do humans do that?" It had been bothering him since the first time he learned what smoking was.

She shrugged. "I can't speak for everyone."

"All right, then why do you?"

"I don't have to tell you." Noelle looked playful. "It's a pretty personal question. For me, anyway." Castiel nodded, though he did not understand at all. "So, about Dean?"

"Yes?"

"You guys are close, right?"

"We've been through a lot together."

"Yeah. You should see his face when he wakes up and you've gone somewhere, he looks all disappointed."

Castiel frowned. "Why?

"I don't know," replied Noelle, smiling. Castiel didn't understand her; either she was so well-adjusted that watching her brother get shot and killed, losing her home, freedom, and peace of mind, and almost getting kidnapped by a demon all within the space of a week didn't bother her as much as it would bother a normal person, or she was burying everything deep within the recesses of her human mind and it was going to explode out of her at an extremely inconvenient time. "You tell me."

Castiel looked at her, still not comprehending. "I… don't know. That's why I asked you."

She wore a small, cryptic smile, and Castiel noticed the cigarette between her two fingers was shaking. He was about to comment on it, but Sam and Dean left the motel room at that moment and joined Castiel and Noelle outside.

"Everyone ready?" asked Dean.

"Yeah," Noelle replied, shifting her suitcase in her free hand.

Dean pointed to her face. "That better be out before you get _near_ the car."

"Yes, Dad," Noelle rolled her eyes. She didn't notice the change in Dean's expression, but Castiel did. He placed his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"Let's get going," muttered Dean, acknowledging Castiel's hand with a brief look of thanks.


	4. Demonic Wards and Angel Wings

Author's notes: New episodes start tomorrow, yay! To celebrate, I'm putting up another chapter. If anyone's lurking, I hope you're enjoying it.

**Chapter Four**

Sam and Dean were in town, investigating the disappearences, and Noelle was stuck in angel training with Cas, hating her life.

"Feel my grace from this end of the room," Castiel was saying for the hundredth time. "And try to move in that direction. Focus on it."

"You have to shut up and let me concentrate," muttered Noelle through clenched teeth. She shut her eyes and tried to open her senses, seeing the faint white glow beneath her eyelids, coming from where she knew Castiel was standing. She breathed in deep, trying to clear her mind without forcing it… to see the room as it really was: matter she could move. Or should be able to move. After a few more moments, she noticed the glow that was Cas started to get brighter, as if it were increasing in strength—no, she could just see it better. Well, that was a start. Maybe this wasn't going to be so hard—no, she told herself, _focus._ She reached into herself, trying to find her own grace, and to her excitement, upon raising her metaphysical arms, she saw that they were glowing ever so slightly – like a cell phone screen seen through a thick veil. Breathing in deeply, she reached for Castiel's side of the room and folded.

And suddenly she was beside Cas, leaning on him and bleeding from the nose onto his trenchcoat. She gasped, blinking rapidly, as Castiel held her at arm's length, trying to look at her.

"Noelle. Noelle, look at me. Are you all right?"

"I did it!" she cried, pressing a sleeve to her nose and smiling, the taste of blood metallic on her tongue. "Holy shit, I'm gonna faint." She was listing forward; Castiel held her up by the shoulder.

"That was good – much better. I didn't expect you to remain conscious on your first success."

"Oh, ye of little faith." Noelle grinned, walking to the bathroom and running the cold water. She grabbed a washcloth, held it under the flow, and pinched her nose with it. Her voice came out nasal as she said, "Sorry I bled on you."

"It's all right. The stain came out."

She nodded. "Good. Where's my MacBook?"

#

When Sam and Dean came back, Noelle was seated at the small table, leaning her head on one arm and scrolling through the text on her computer screan, and Castiel was sitting quietly on the bed, wondering why Dean hadn't been sleeping, whether Noelle would be able to withstand another demon attack, and how the battles were going upstairs. He caught his mental use of the word, upstairs, and nearly chuckled; he was beginning to speak like a human again.

The door opened and the brothers came inside, Dean looking grim, Sam coolly thoughtful, as usual.

"So how'd it go?" asked Noelle sleepily from the table.

"It's weird, man." Dean opened the minifridge and pulled out two beers, clearly by force of habit, because he looked at Sam before turning to Castiel, pretending he hadn't made the slip in judgement. "You want?"

"Sure," said Castiel, to keep up the charade.

Dean threw him the bottle. "We can't make any damn sense out of it. The only thing we came up with is—"

"—that it's like a Seal breaking," finished Sam.

For a moment, Castiel forgot to use Jimmy's lungs, and found himself short of breath. He shook his head slightly. "That's impossible. We would have known if Raphael and his followers had succeeded in re-starting the Apocalypse. I would have sensed it."

"It _better_ be impossible," mumbled Noelle. She was falling asleep against her arm. "I thought I dodged that bullet. No freaking Apocalypse for Noelle. If I turn out to be wrong, I'm gonna be so—" the word was lost in a yawn "—so pissed."

"Yeah, so are we," muttered Dean, turning her computer away from her to look at it. The screen was a striped pattern of red, orange and yellow, with the shades ranging from soft white to black, and at the top was a symbol Castiel recognized, but only vaguely. "What are you, a Buddhist?"

"Reading up on it," replied Noelle, pulling her hood over her head without sitting up. "Concentrating really helped me angel out today, so I figure if I start meditating, maybe it'll help more."

"And you meditate with your head on the table?"

"I'm not doing it now, asshole, I'm passing out from exhaustion," she said, as if telling him it was raining outside.

"Yeah, good talk, but you might want to do it in the bed, sister."

Noelle cracked open one blue eye and glared at him. "If I move at all, I'll wake up completely and it'll defeat the purpose of—Cas, what are you…?"

Castiel had stood up, tugged down her hood, and touched his two fingertips to her forehead to put her to sleep. Dean raised his eyebrows.

"She hasn't been sleeping," Castiel explained, sliding his whole palm onto her forehead and teleporting them both over to her bed, so she was beneath the covers and he stood beside her.

"Well," said Sam. "That makes four of us."

"What are you talking about?" asked Dean defensively. So Sam had noticed it as well. Castiel deemed it prudent to intervene.

"We can both tell when you're pretending to be asleep," he said.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I had a pair of creeps staring at me while I'm trying to get some shuteye," Dean said. "Maybe that's why, ever consider that?"

"No," replied Castiel flatly. Dean glared at him for a few seconds, then abruptly changed the subject.

"Could a demon get inside her, Cas?"

"Dean—"

"Answer the question."

Castiel seethed, but didn't show it. "I would assume one could, if it were not deterred by her grace. Although that might make her more appealing."

"Yeah, thought so. Okay, tomorrow we're taking a day trip. Pack a fucking picnic basket. And Sam—"

"Call Bobby about the Seals?" guessed Sam.

Dean nodded, jerking one thumb towards the ceiling. "You got it."

Castiel watched Dean from the corner of his eye as the latter stepped into the bathroom for a shower. Only once during the past four days had Castiel actually been present when Dean woke up, but on that one day, he had woken up with a gasp and a shudder, as if from a nightmare. Sam clearly didn't care, and Noelle had either been too polite or too dismissive to mention it to Castiel, but now it was out in the open, for better or worse – though with Dean, it always seemed to be worse.

"Sam," said Castiel, "I'm going back up to Heaven to find out if anyone has heard anything about more Seals breaking."

Sam looked up at him, cell phone held against his ear. "Okay?" he asked. The rest of his sentence, _do whatever you want, I could care less_ went unsaid, but not unheard. Castiel wondered why he had bothered to voice his destination at all, but the answer entered his mind immediately after. He didn't want Dean to wonder where he'd gone.

#

The boys woke Noelle up far earlier than her body had intended. Her head was heavy and achy, as if she had a hangover, and all she wanted to do was slump back onto the mattress, pull the covers back over her head, and tell them to fuck off, but Dean wasn't wasting time.

"Get up," he said, tossing her suitcase onto her bed. "We got stuff to do."

"I'm coming this time?" she asked blearily, sitting up and running her fingers through her bangs.

"Yeah, Evie, you're the guest of honor."

"Cas coming?"

"Cas is coming, would you please get dressed?"

"Where," asked Noelle, awake enough to be annoyed, but not awake enough to see properly, "could we possibly be going that's so urgent I have to get ready at lightning speed?"

It turned out that they were going to a tattoo parlor. Noelle was pissed and confused, until Dean explained his reasoning, both himself and Sam pulling at the collars of their shirts to show her the protective symbols tattooed on her chests. "Just precaution," Dean told her. "We really don't need a demon running around in meat with angel mojo."

Noelle had deemed this fair and, more importantly, practical, so she agreed without much prodding.

"You need to, like, hold my hand or something?" asked Dean, looking not condescending as she had thought, but concerned. Noelle smirked, unzipped her hoodie, and tugged off her Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt, exposing the ink she already had.

"No, I'm good," she assured him, then began to blush as she realized all three guys were checking out her torso – Castiel with benign curiosity, Dean looking like he was trying extremely hard not to be interested, and Sam with undisguised appreciation. On her hip was a comet whose tail was made up of tiny stars, and that trailed off around to her lower back and down into the waistband of her jeans. The evil eye done in blue was nestled in the small of her back, a tramp stamp for which Christian had mocked her until she threatened him with a playful fist (Christian's name was like a knife in her memory, it hurt to think of him, but it hurt worse not to). At the back of her neck was King George's crown; she had originally planned to have the motto "Keep calm and carry on," tattooed in an arc over it, but she had not yet gotten around to it. "Guys, for real. You're all ogling me and it's bizarre."

"It's uncanny," said Castiel, "that you got angel wings. How long ago was that?"

"What? Don't be ridiculous, Cas."

"What do you mean?" Castiel tilted his head.

"I mean I don't have angel wings anywhere on me."

"You kiddin' me?" said Dean. "Look in the mirror."

Noelle twisted in one jerky movement, looking in the mirror beside the chair, and sure enough, a pair of angel wings stretched over her entire back, broken only by her black bra, each wing composed of individual feathers and each feather minutely detailed, too detailed to have been inked, even by a professional. Yet it was not a burn, like Castiel's handprint on Dean's arm, but it looked… well, _like_ ink. Like a tattoo.

She rounded on the angel. "What the actual _fuck_, Cas? Did Adam and Eve walk around with angel wings on their fucking backs?"

"I don't know," Castiel replied, sounding annoyed she had chosen to turn her anger onto him. "I wasn't there. I didn't walk the Earth until three years ago."

She sulked, glancing over her shoulder and lamenting the loss of canvas for future tattoos. "This sucks ass. I was going to get my _own _backpiece. I—" She cut off her bitching as Dean drew a finger across his throat, looking behind her. The tattoo artist was coming out of the back room.

"You ready?" he asked her.

Noelle smiled, nodding. He had long hair and wore a white wifebeater, and every inch of visible skin from chin to wrist was covered in ink. "I'm ready," she replied.

It seemed like only a few minutes later that the artist covered her new tattoo with a bandage and she slipped her T-shirt back on, her breast feeling tender and irritated after the needle. Dean paid the man, who grinned at Noelle, saying, "You know where to find me, let's grab a drink sometime," as she waved and only winked in response, following the boys out onto the street.

"Well, he was friendly," said Sam.

Noelle smiled in spite of the fact that Sam royally creeped her out. "And _cute._ And you have to admire his courage, I come in with three dudes and he still has the stones to hit on me. What a dreamboat._"_

"What, is that the kind of guy you go for?" asked Dean, who also seemed to be in a better mood. "Tattooed to shit?"

"Excuse me, I have more tattoos than you guys combined, thank you," countered Noelle, lighting a cigarette.

"Oh, well that just makes you quite the badass, doesn't it?"

All four of them whirled around, Noelle trying and failing to bring her grace to the surface, to use it as a weapon. In front of them stood a black-coated man with a receding hairline, smirking at them. "Hello, boys. Picked up some jailbait for the road, have we?"

"Not exactly," Dean said tightly. "Cas, get her out of here."

"No no," replied the man, turning towards Noelle. "We can't have that. Any friend of the Winchesters is an employee of mine."

"Beg your pardon?" asked Noelle, scowling. "Who is this clown?"

"What, so you haven't even mentioned me?" He shook his head. "Bad manners, chaps. Little girls should know who their sugar daddies are working for."

"Okay, _gross,_" Noelle said frankly, because… well, _gross._ Yeah, she was traveling with three good-looking guys, but Sam still scared the shit out of her, Cas was, well, Cas, and Dean—just, no. Gross.

"Noelle, this is Crowley, the King of Hell," said Dean grudgingly. "Crowley, meet Noelle, our new sidekick. Now what the hell do you want?"

Noelle found it maddening that Dean had just continued the conversation without allowing her a moment to splutter in disbelief that she was talking to the King of Hell, that Sam and Dean were working for him. Castiel had slid over to her and was caressing the air in an arc before her, behind the shield of Dean's broad shoulders so Crowley couldn't see what was happening. Suddenly Noelle felt like she was in a knot of thick smog, stifling her mental faculties and making her vision fuzzy with brightness. She blinked a couple of times, sense of balance thrown off, and was immensely grateful when Cas stood so his side pressed against her, allowing her some frame of reference for which way was up and which way was down.

_Tr-…not… show…_

He was trying to communicate with her. Noelle closed her eyes, focusing, and Castiel was brilliantly white under her shut eyelids. Was it the proximity or was it just getting easier?

_Try not to show your disorientation… I am shielding your grace from Crowley with my own. He will not notice._

She nodded mentally and turned her muddled attention to the exchange taking place before them. Sam had just finished shutting Dean up, convincing him to hear what Crowley had to say.

"What's going on, Crowley?" asked Sam. "You know anything about the disappearences here?"

"I might," Crowley replied.

"Well? Is someone trying to bust Lucifer out of the Cage?"

Crowley's lips bent in distaste. "I don't know."

"King of Hell not keeping close tabs on his loyal subjects?" quipped Dean.

"I don't appreciate your attitude," Crowley shot back. "If anything, I would hope Castiel here is on the busting-out task force."

"I will not let it happen," said Castiel grimly.

"Good, old boy. Now you two, I have a job for you, so shut up and pay attention."

"We're all ears, your majesty."

Crowley smiled sarcastically. "Sandbridge, Virginia. Werewolf. Go find it."

"What, is that all?" demanded Dean.

"All the information I have."

"Great. Freakin' great." Dean rolled his eyes.

"That's seriously all you're gonna give us?" asked Sam.

"Like I said – that's it." Crowley turned to leave, then glanced back at Noelle. "If she's going to be a hindrance, I'd suggest you dump her somewhere. There's no take-your-kid-to-work day."

"She'll be fine," Dean assured him angrily.

"She'd better be."

When Crowley was gone, Castiel lifted the daze he had put on her and Noelle staggered, shocked at the sudden clarity of both her sight and mind. Dean cocked an eyebrow at her. "You okay? Shit, that was close. Does he know, Cas?"

"No," Castiel replied. "I was hiding her from him."

"Good. Thanks."

Was it Noelle's befuddled brain, or did the look they exchange last just a couple of seconds longer than normal?

"So, what now?" Noelle said. "We just ditch New Haven after a Seal could have been broken?"

"Yeah, I'm with Noelle on this one."

"Dean, we've been through this a thousand times," said Sam. "If we want to get my soul back, Crowley's the way to do it."

"Yeah, that's another thing!" Noelle glared from Winchester to Winchester, dropping her cigarette and crushing it under her foot. "What the hell? You're working for a demon?"

_ "_Not by choice," muttered Dean. "He's the head hancho now that Lucifer's locked up. He's the one who raised Sam from Hell. And he's the one who's got the keys to the Cage where Sam's soul is."

And where the third brother was, Noelle realized, though she didn't say it. "I don't like it."

"No one likes it." Dean opened the trunk, jerking his chin towards the car, indicating they should get in. "Last time we worked with a demon, the Apocalypse started."

Noelle slid into the back seat with Cas, who was deep in thought. She was loathe to break the silence, and so she just sat, glaring out the window. The bandage under her shirt rustled against the material. Castiel's grace – she was beginning to recognize the touch, the unseen sparkle of bright light on her barely-there glow – brushed at hers and he tried to speak, but her concentration failed when Dean opened the door she was leaning on and she nearly spilled out of the car, barely catching the small, heavy object he tossed into her lap.

"What's—?" But she knew what it was as soon as she regained her balance. He had given her a knife in a leather sheath, a bit longer than her outstretched palm from heel to finger. Intrigued, she tugged it out partway, admiring the pentacle carved by the hilt.

"Keep that on you at all times," he said, sliding into the driver's seat.

"You're giving it to me?"

"Yeah, Evie, I'm giving it to you. Don't lose it."

Noelle smiled softly, tucking it into her pocket. "Thanks, Dean."

"Yeah, don't mention it." He started the car. "More trouble than it's worth if you die on us."

"Oh, thanks."

"I just tell it like it is."

#

Castiel had the sense that Noelle felt that she was always stuck with him – which was true. He had gone back up to Heaven during the car ride to Virginia, but Sam and Dean couldn't take Noelle with them if they were to pose as cops to look into the werewolf case, so rather than leaving her alone, Castiel came back earlier than he had hoped and stayed with her as they tailed the brothers, keeping close enough to help if needed. Noelle had questioned the safety of this course of action, but Sam had simply replied, "You're a hunter now, might as well start your real training." Castiel agreed, to a certain extent. She had to be able to defend herself, but this was tricky. He could sense how uncomfortable she was with a gun tucked down the back of her jeans, and he knew that Noelle being there set Dean on edge. He would have to talk to Dean, and soon, before this ended badly for everyone.

Noelle herself was sulking at her plate. That was one thing Castiel had noticed about her early on: the sulking. Most of the time, when she drifted off into silence, Castiel could read genuine grief on her face, grief that she had yet to really talk about. But other times the pain that he could see carved in her face seemed to dissipate, as if the events of the past few days had drowned out her sorrow, and she was just sulking. Castiel had a feeling she had been a moody girl even before everything that had befallen her.

"What?" he asked her.

She stabbed a piece of chicken in her salad. "This is rank. Hunter wasn't exactly my career of choice, but now that I don't _have _a choice, I don't want to do it half-assed. Which is exactly what I'm doing."

"What do you mean, half-assed?" asked Castiel. The mental image that accompanied the phrase was… disturbing.

"Not all the way. It's just an expression." She glared at the bite on her fork moodily before eating it.

"Dean is trying to protect you," Castiel explained. "I believe, with his soul intact, Sam would too. They didn't ask for this life any more than you did. And should anything happen to you, Dean will be… compromised."

"What's his deal?" asked Noelle. "It's not his fault I'm here, it just… happened. Why does he blame himself?"

"Dean had issues with guilt long before the Apocalypse fell on his shoulders," replied Castiel. "It… didn't help."

Noelle was silent for a moment, chewing her salad. Then, "He must be really screwed up if half of what you guys have told me is true."

"You have no idea."

She laughed quietly. "Hey, Cas… tell me about Heaven."

"Why do you want to know?" he asked, tilting his head. None of the humans he had encountered thus far had ever asked him about his Home.

"I'm sharing in some of its power, aren't I?" she said. "I'm like… a holy Girl Scout or something."

"Something," Castiel agreed.

"So, shouldn't I know what Heaven's like?"

Castiel steepled his fingers and rested his chin on the tips, surveying her carefully. He could see a baby angel, scarcely more than what in a human would be an embryo, growing within her grace, taking form, the tiny stunted wings, the feathers coming in soft and downy. It would take centuries to mature; Noelle would be dead long before she could become anything resembling a true angel. But perhaps in Heaven… "Why don't you try to visualize it?" he suggested.

Noelle raised an eyebrow in an expression so reminiscent of Dean that Castiel wondered if they weren't somehow related. "What?"

"I can't describe Heaven to you," he explained. "But I might be able to show it to you. Telepathically."

But Noelle stood up suddenly, looking out the window. Castiel followed her eyes; Sam and Dean were coming out of the apartment complex across the street. He looked at her meaningfully (not understanding the sarcastic look she gave him in return), then Noelle tossed a few bills onto the table and they left the diner.

"Hey," said Dean. "No demonic visits?"

"None," replied Castiel. "What about you? Is this really a werewolf?"

"We think so," replied Sam. "Although the last 'werewolf' case was actually a skinwalker, but either way, Crowley won't be pissed."

"Oh, good, as long as the bossman's happy," Noelle muttered. Sam glanced at her.

"I'm sorry, do _you _want to throw your two cents in as well, you've been here less than a week? I thought I scared the hell out of you."

"You do," she replied, face hard, "and if I knew you guys were working for demons, I would have—"

"What, gone on your own way? You wouldn't have lasted twenty-four hours without us. And then we'd all be screwed, because either Hell would use you to move in on Heaven, or Heaven would use you to open up Hell."

"Oh, cus you care so much about _anything_."

"I care about one thing right now: getting my soul back."

"Do you, even?" Noelle and Sam were very close now, staring each other down over a vertical distance of about thirteen inches, and Dean insinuated his arm between them and pushed Sam back a step.

"All right, all right, shut up!" he shouted, glaring from his brother to Noelle. "Both of you. Or I'm angel-sigiling you to New Mexico."

"Sigil doesn't banish me, douchebag, it just hurts like a bitch – and Sam started it!"

If Castiel were human, he would probably have something called a migraine right now. "Can we just – focus on the werewolf?" he asked, resigned to the fact that they were probably going to bicker for the rest of his life.

The thought startled him – there was no _rest of his life._ There was Eternity. There was a rest of _their _lives, but not his.

Sam turned away from Dean and Noelle. "Right, the werewolf. Three possibles – it's a single mother and her two kids. Mom works nights, teenage daughter goes out with her friends, eleven-year-old son's home alone. We're gonna need to tail all of them, so Dean will take the daughter, I'll take the mom, and Cas, you and Noelle keep an eye on the kid."

"How did you narrow it down to those three?" asked Noelle politely, a verbal white flag that Sam acknowledged by continuing in the same tone of voice.

"Well, there's three vics so far, and Dean and I did some digging. First was the ex-husband, reportedly beat the mother until she divorced him, then a lawyer who, we found out, got the dad off for the spousal abuse and saved him some jailtime, and the last one was a kid at the daughter's high school. He was accused of drugging the girl at a party, but the charges were dropped because the family couldn't afford the lawyer."

"So, it's probably either the mom or the girl, but all three are suspects," continued Dean. "Noelle, you packing?"

She tapped the gun tucked under her leather jacket and held up her arm, where Castiel knew she had strapped the knife Dean had given her beneath her sleeve.

"All right, good stuff. Cas, keep her safe, all right?"

"I will," Castiel replied solemnly. Dean nodded. He was getting bags under his eyes and he blinked more often, as if trying to dispel the exhaustion. "We have a few hours until sunset. Sam, maybe you should take Noelle out for combat training. She doesn't know how to use that knife."

"I've used a knife," said Noelle haughtily.

"For something other than peeling apples," shot back Castiel, finding himself pleased with her grumpy face. Dean laughed slightly.

"He's got a point. You kids play nice. Don't angel out on him, and _you _don't sociopath out on her."

Noelle glared, and started to walk away, but Sam looked from Dean to Castiel, his brow slightly creased as if trying to figure something out. Noelle put her hand on his sleeve and he turned around to follow her.

Dean sighed. "They're driving me up the wall. Let's get some pie, I'm starving."

The waitress who had just served him and Noelle smiled at Castiel as he and Dean sat down at the same booth. "Finally got hungry?" she asked. "Noticed you weren't eating before with your daughter."

"Oh, uh, yes," replied Castiel. Dean shot him a quizzical look. "And she's… not my daughter. Um, I'll have the…"

"We'll both have the blueberry pie," Dean interrupted. "And coffee. Black."

"Coming right up, boys." She grinned at them as she walked away.

Dean laughed mirthlessly. "As if Novak looks old enough to have an eighteen-year-old daughter. How is the poor bastard, anyway?"

"Jimmy is… tired." Castiel looked at the table, feeling rather guilty. "I am looking for a way to allow his soul to move on without having to find a new vessel."

"I dunno, you'd just be wearing a dead body, wouldn't you? Creepy."

"It's better than making Jimmy suffer." Castiel looked at Dean's tired face. "What about you, Dean? Are you still suffering?"

He smiled bitterly. "Cas, come on. It's me. Do I _do _anything else?"

"You should forgive yourself."

"You say that every time something bad happens."

"You blame yourself every time." Castiel racked his brains for something to say that wouldn't deepen the misery etched in his friend's face. "Noelle is going to be a great hunter."

Whatever he should have said, that wasn't it. Dean's eyes darkened and he looked for the waitress. "I don't want her to be a great hunter, Cas. It's a sham. The great hunters, they end up like Sam. Killing machines who don't give a damn about collateral damage, the lives they end trying to save the lives of other people."

"Sam is a different case." There was no comparison; how did Dean not see this? "He's been robbed of his soul. That wasn't a byproduct of his lifestyle; it was theft."

"What do you think would have happened, Cas?" asked Dean bitterly. "The same thing that happened to Samuel."

"What about Bobby?"

"Yeah, Bobby's a bucket of laughs."

"He still cares." Castiel paused. "Speaking of Bobby, did Sam call him?"

"Yeah. He's going through about six thousand years of research and then he's gonna get back to us. Ah, finally." The waitress flashed her winning smile at them, setting down two plates of pie and two cups of coffee.

"You guys holler if you need anything else," she said.

"Oh, we will," replied Dean, digging in with enthusiasm. "Ugh, I love diner pie."

"I didn't mean that Noelle will turn into a heartless hunter," said Castiel; ignoring the situation wouldn't make it go away. "I actually think she'll turn out more like you."

Dean looked at him, deadpan, one cheek bulging to the side with his mouthful of pie. "Oh, that's better," he said sarcastically. "She either ends up dead inside, or _me._"

"It is a good thing, Dean," Castiel insisted, leaning forward. "You, after everything you have been through, are still a good person. You still care. The world would be lucky to have more hunters like you."

Dean didn't reply, didn't meet Castiel's eyes – didn't speak at all, except to say, "Your tie's in your pie, dude."

Castiel looked down and plucked it off the plate, wiping the crumbs onto the table. "That's not the point."

"Cas, look. I appreciate the pep talk, I really do. But…" He cast his gaze around the diner, looking lost and helpless. "Sam tried to escape this and Yellow Eyes killed his girlfriend. I tried to escape it and I could've hurt Ben. I could've hurt Lisa. I could've killed them, Cas. So that's it – we Winchesters, we're in this for life. And I accept that. But now we drag an innocent kid into this life and you expect me to be okay with that? She can never get married, never have a career, never have kids, never settle down – the only thing she'll know from now on is killing these evil sonsabitches. And we ain't even doing that right! We're working for a demon."

Castiel liked this; it was good. Not Dean's pain, but the fact that he was letting it out. "Noelle wasn't exactly innocent," he said, choosing to ignore the mention of Crowley. "It was too late and we had no other choice. And… that's… on _me,_ Dean. That was my mistake. I didn't get to her in time."

Dean smiled weakly. "What, are we playing the blame game now?"

"No," replied Castiel, blinking at the terminology. Few things felt less like games to him. "I am just trying to stop you from blaming yourself for what is not your fault."

"Yeah, well." He looked out the window. "Thanks, Cas."

"You're welcome." Castiel watched Dean pretend he didn't know Castiel was watching him, the way his eyes remained too fixed on one point and didn't move. He could see Dean's pain as clearly as he could see his stubble, and as minutes ticked by and Dean remained silent, Castiel wished he could do more. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you eat your pie?"


	5. First Hunt

Author's Notes: I just finished watching the episode that should have been on last Friday, but the CW decided to be assholes. And I have to say, without giving much away, I really, really wish I could explore the whole Cas-not-wanting-Sam's-soul-back thing in much greater detail, because I know exactly how Noelle would react and it would make for an interesting scene with her and Dean, not to mention her and Cas, not to mention _Dean _and Cas, buuuut I can't. Drats. So I'm gonna do my best to patch this up, but I've written quite a bit of this story so far and Sammy still isn't our Sammy again yet. I'm actually really annoyed with it and I wish I could just skip over everything I have planned and shove that pesky thing back in him and fuck logic and continuity and basically the entire plot of the fic (and future fics; the plot bunnies are multiplying like you wouldn't believe), but what are you gonna do… sigh. At least we get Sammy in canon!SPN. Now I just have to put up with Sambot in my own friggin' fanfic. Please enjoy and review.

**Chapter Five**

Noelle wanted to try teleporting up to the fire escape on which they were going to spend the night spying, but Castiel forbade it, citing the likelihood that she would overshoot herself and end up directly in the apartment. She reluctantly agreed that yes, it was a possibility, and so she allowed Cas to place his hand on her shoulder and fold the space for her. Every time she was close to Cas when both were in their angelic states, she got a sense of how much _greater _his grace was than hers. It was to be expected, of course, but it was unfortunate. Noelle knew that Sam and Dean expected a lot of her, but she felt like a firefly compared to the North Star. She could get better at shooting guns, she could master the knife that Sam had said she had a natural talent for, she could even dig deeper into her grace and teleport better and without the nosebleeds and maybe learn some other parlor tricks, too, but she was just a glorified human, and eventually, Sam and Dean would need a reality check. And just when would she be able to call up the wisdom she'd imbibed at will? So far, it had happened in brief flashes that left her dizzy and grasping for the information, like she was waking up from a rapidly fading dream. Perhaps the meditation would help with that. Although without being able to tap into the Mind of God, she was essentially useless as a weapon, so maybe avoiding developing that particular ability would be a better move… she'd meditate on that, too. See if there was any insight she could snatch from the aether, or whatever. If she ever _got_ to meditate, that was, seeing as she spent every waking moment either in the car, training, in a diner, or trying to force herself to fall asleep. And, now, on werewolf duty.

Noelle dug her knife in between two slats of metal on the fire escape, tugged it out, reinserted it, and kept doing that until Castiel politely told her that the sound was grating on his nerves and if she didn't stop, he was going to smite her. She wondered if his lovers' chat with Dean was the reason for his snippiness, or if it was her immensely inferior and disappointing abilities. Probably both.

To pass the time, she told Cas to shake her if anything happened, sat cross-legged, and shut her eyes, but it was impossible to really concentrate on anything but their mission with the hot metal of the gun pressing into the skin of her backside. She compromised, trying to see if she could call up any information about the child in the apartment. The sound of Castiel drinking from the bottle of wine they had brought up to make them seem like they were just hanging out like they belonged there drew her away from her thoughts, though; she could not sink into a trance.

She tried a different technique, reaching inwardly for her grace, imagining it as a spool of fine thread, and cast the thread into the apartment, searching for him. He was in the… bedroom. His bedroom. Reading a graphic novel at his desk. Noelle smiled softly, gently wrapping him in the thread, trying to see him. He had bright red hair and freckles; he looked like a young Ron Weasley.

Sam and Dean had told her his name: Quince Fielding. His mother was Lauren, his sister Kara. He didn't know why Dad, Kara's old boyfriend, and that sour-looking lawyer had all been killed, but maybe his family had a guardian angel looking after them. The idea made him smile. Kara was trying to rebel against their mom by wearing all black and refusing to go to church and quoting books she hadn't read, "God is dead, God is dead." Quince didn't think so, but he understood Kara like Mom didn't, the same way he understood Mom like Kara didn't. If Mom didn't have God, he had tried to explain to his sister, then she would be lost. "What's your excuse?" Kara had asked him. Quince had replied that his watch didn't make itself, and the universe is a lot more complicated than a watch, drawing a reluctant laugh from Kara as she put her arm around his neck and tugged her to her side playfully so he stumbled a little, both of them laughing. He felt guilty, then, for feeling happy that those three men had been killed, but he, Kara, and Mom were good people, and they didn't deserve any of the bad things that had happened to them. So maybe it was right. And maybe it wasn't. Quince didn't pretend to know.

Noelle's eyes opened, the thread running back to the spool.

"Shit," she muttered, snatching the bottle from Castiel. "What a kid."

"Hm?" he asked.

"I just… I don't know." She took a long drink. "I read him?"

"With your grace?" Castiel looked surprised. "How did you do it?"

Noelle explained her spool method, adding, "I don't think I would've been able to, only he was specifically thinking about…" she laughed. "About guardian angels. That kind of opened a little connection between us, I guess, and I just latched onto it."

"Fascinating," said Castiel, leaning in towards her and taking the wine back. "Your human side actually seems to guide your grace. Fascinating…"

"Is that good?"

"It's different."

"…Is it bad?"

"It's different. Noelle."

She frowned at him, looking into the sunset. "You're really friggin' cryptic, Cas."

"I am sorry," he said. Noelle shrugged.

"It's all right… God's a lot more cryptic. This apple nonsense makes less sense than the kids in my high school French class." She shook her head. The last rays of sun scintillated off the buildings, off the water of the beach they could see from their vantage point. It sparkled orange and pink below the dark blue, star-scattered sky, and Noelle could taste the rich wine mixed with the smell and taste of the salt in the air. Castiel stared, enraptured, looking utterly at peace as the last orange rays cast a shine into his blue eyes, completely content, though he did not smile. It looked right, to see Cas framed against the sunset. Like he belonged here, on Earth. There were no sunsets in Heaven. Noelle, later, would always remember that moment she and her mentor shared hours before everything went wrong; it was beautiful and it was perfect, and Noelle saw in her mind the impression of Dean's face and knew by the white light bathing it that it was coming from Cas.

And then, three hours later, the snarling started.

Noelle turned to Castiel, stricken, and then dropped the bottle, jumped to her feet, and whipped the gun out of the waistband of her jeans. She tugged at the closed window, biting her lip against what she had to do, before Castiel grabbed her arm and shoved his palm against her forehead, and when he removed it they were in the living room.

"Quince!" she called, holding the gun at the ready, the way Sam had taught her. She followed the sound – it was animalistic, bestial – and then it worsened. Drywall crunched as razor-sharp claws dragged across it, the snarling becoming a frenzied panting. "Quince, buddy… snap out of it," she nearly whispered.

"Noelle!" called Castiel angrily over the noise. "Stop stalling! Do what needs to be done!"

"Don't rush me!" she yelled back, through a wave of fury that she knew, in the back of her mind, was directed at the situation and not at Castiel himself.

The door splintered open and Quince pounced out, rounding on her and baring his teeth, which had elongated into the predatory teeth of a wolf. To her surprise, he was still human – humanoid, at least, with two legs and two arms, but there was nothing human in his eyes, which had turned from bright, friendly green to slitted, hungry yellow.

"Quince—" she cried, but he leapt at her and she squeezed the trigger, eyes shut. Sam would have killed her if she saw her take the shot like that, but hearing his howls and yelps of pain, she thought she might just do it herself. She had shot Quince in the leg, not the heart, and he was thrashing about in blind pain. He tore at the mounted TV, which fell from the wall onto the coffee table in a shower of sparks and glass, and Noelle dove to the floor for cover, shielding her face. Involuntarily, her grip tightened on the gun, and a shot fired off into the wall.

"Noelle!" roared Castiel.

"Cas, shut the fuck up!" she screamed, lurching to her feet and again holding the gun at the ready. She edged through the wreckage, hearing nothing but her own harried breathing and thudding heart. "Quince, bud… come back out…"

A faint growling came from the hall of the large apartment. Noelle backed up against the wall and peeked out, just in time to see him lunge at her. She screamed and, without thinking, brought the butt of the pistol down on his skull. Blood ran down his face, and he howled in agony before bolting out the window.

"No!" cried Noelle, running to it, but he had scaled down the fire escape and was sprinting down the street. "Cas—!"

Castiel was already on it. He seized her arm and jerked her towards him, teleporting them down to the street a half block in front of the werewolf. "You must do this!" he thundered at her.

"Why can't you?" she choked out, a tear slipping down her cheek as she aimed. The werewolf was turning around to double back. "Cas, I… I can't."

"You _can _and you will, because your only hope of survival is to become a hunter. And this is part of it. Now _do it!"_

In that moment, Noelle saw the Castiel Dean had seen when they first met in the warehouse less than two days after Dean's resurrection from Hell: terrifying, powerful, capable of anything. She nodded, still biting back the curious mix of horror, nausea, and adrenaline, and tore off after the werewolf.

Any remnants of the beautiful sunset she and Castiel had watched had vanished, leaving only the bleak, clammy night, the smell of low tide, and Noelle pushed herself faster. She was not out of shape, but she was not an athlete either, and yet sprinting this far had only made her breath short, not impossible to come by, and she ran still faster, propelling herself by what she thought was sheer will. Still the werewolf remained ahead of her, and she reached within herself, not holding her grace with her mental fingers but digging them into it and ripping it open to climb inside – and she saw _everything._ The world, it was nothing! She could fold herself anywhere she wanted to go. She could see every inch of the earth, see the bright, celestial winds that would take her to Heaven and deep beneath her flying feet, the dark specters who would drag her to Hell if allowed half a chance. Everything was loose, as if colors were being blown out of their lines, and the colors themselves took on a hue mortal eyes could not perceive, bold, brilliant, and she could see it all. She could even see beyond the plane before her, into chapters backwards and forwards, but she knew she couldn't reach them, not yet—but she could reach the werewolf. She bent the fabric to land several feet in front of him, and whirled around to face him.

He skidded, yelping in shock, and the second where he and Noelle both knew he would not get away seemed to drag on a lifetime as she squeezed the trigger and sent the bullet flying straight into his heart, and he fell without another sound. She did too, as blood dripped from her nose to the pavement between her splayed knees.

Castiel was beside her in a second, placing his hand on her shoulder. He was speaking to her, and Noelle could understand the words, but they didn't stick in her head, like it only had room for one thing and that was the body of the child she had just murdered. She jerked her sight away from it, feeling sick, and the regret boiled up in her like bile. She understood Dean's guilt and why Sam didn't seem to want his soul back, she understood why Dean kept trying to keep her on the sidelines. This – this was what he meant by the sacrifice of everything. He didn't mean material possessions, he meant peace of mind.

And then, crashing over her regret, her horror, her _guilt,_ came the aching lack of Christian, like she had been ripped in half. Christian, if Christian were here, he would know what to do. He would have stopped her from doing this. He would be here right now, her big brother, and everything would be okay.

She didn't realize it was Castiel's doing when she blacked out; she didn't even feel the touch of his fingers on her forehead.

#

Castiel turned towards the motel room door as it opened.

"So, Lauren's clean, Kara's clean, that only leaves the kid, Quince," Dean said by way of a greeting as he and Sam came inside. "Please tell me you ganked it."

"I… um, ganked nothing," replied Castiel. "Noelle shot it."

"What—in the heart?" asked Sam, eyebrows up. "Like, aiming it and everything?" Castiel and Dean both glared. "What? She got better, but she's still a godawful shot."

"Where is she now, the bathroom?" asked Dean, ignoring his brother.

Castiel winced inwardly. "No, she's… out."

Dean turned his head sideways, frowning. "She's out?"

"She went for a walk. To clear her head."

"What, by herself?" Dean stepped in front of Castiel, who didn't stand up from the bed but looked up at him without much interest. "After what happened at the laundromat?"

"Yeah, Cas, that wasn't your brightest move," said Sam.

Castiel glared at them both. "It was much more prudent to let her go now, when I made her promise to stay on the block, than have her sneak out at some other point when we wouldn't know where she is. She's promised to contact me if anything goes wrong."

"What, is she taking a holy power walk or something?"

"No." Castiel stood up, standing close enough to Dean to make him uncomfortable. It always seemed to work when he needed to get his point across. "Noelle is indulging her human side right now, which you and Sam seem to not understand at all. She did not become an angel overnight, Dean. She is not an angel. She's a human with angelic abilities – a very scared, confused, and grieving human." He stared into Dean's eyes for a few seconds, and then turned away. "I've noticed that it seems to calm you people down when you take walks by yourselves. When Noelle said that she was going to, I thought it would be best to let her."

"Cas—" Dean grabbed him by the collar of his trenchcoat and dragged him back. Caught by surprise, Castiel allowed it. "You think I'm losing sight of the fact that she's human? I know she's human, you freakin' bastard. The hell are you trying to say?"

"Only that Noelle needs time before she is able to do this job to the best of her considerable ability," Castiel said. "Until then, we should let her do… your strange coping habits."

Dean's jaw was set. Castiel noticed that Sam had left the room. "Fine, Cas. But how do we know if she's safe?"

"Her grace and mine are more connected now," he replied. "She's getting better at hearing me. If she gets in trouble, she'll call out to me that way. I'll hear."

Dean nodded. "If you say so, freak. But one thing's buggin' me about this whole 'Noelle's grace' thing."

"What?"

"Well…" Dean sat down, his fingers laced and his hands between his comfortably splayed knees. "Back when you, you know. Fell. After awhile, you were cut off from your battery, you couldn't lift a feather."

"Yes, Dean," said Castiel, slightly annoyed, "I remember."

"So, no one up in Heaven but you knows about her, right? No one's up there funneling it down to her, so how does she get the juice?"

Castiel shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure. I've been wondering the same thing."

"Great. How do we know our buddy Raph isn't up there lending it to her, just yankin' us around?"

"Raphael would have taken her already," replied Castiel, sitting beside Dean. "Any of the angels would have done so."

"Yeah. Hope you're right."

Castiel looked up at the ceiling. "Me too."

"Hey… Cas?"

"Yes?"

"You, uh… the whole civil war thing going on upstairs." Dean roughly clapped his hand on Castiel's knee and shook it affectionately. "You're okay, Cas. I mean that. What you're doing up there… it's good."

Castiel smiled softly. He considered asking whether Dean actually meant that or was just trying to make him feel better, but he decided it didn't matter. And neither did the warmth coming from Dean's hand on his leg.

#

Noelle wasn't sure how Sam found her on the roof, but she was pissed. "Of the three of you," she said through a cloud of smoke, "you're the last person I want to talk to about this."

"Oh, I don't know." Sam sat down next to her. "Dean and Cas will give you some bullshit, but from me, you get facts."

"I got all the facts I needed today." She had been a basket case when she'd first woken up, but after a good cry, a long walk, and, so far, four cigarettes, she was feeling… not better, but the feelings were manageable. That was good. Manageable was good.

"Yeah, the first kill. It sucks. Castiel tells me you shot it without fucking up."

"Castiel's a liar, I took the first shot with my eyes closed."

Sam looked like he wanted to either roll his eyes or hit her. "You've got to be kidding."

"I'm not." Noelle took a drag on her cigarette. "What do you want, Sam?"

"How did you get up here, anyway?"

"Teleported."

"Is that why, uh…?" He indicated his nose, and Noelle swiped at hers with her fingers. They came away bloody.

"Huh. Oops." She gathered a fistful of the neck of her shirt and pressed it to her nose. "I was only out for a few minutes, I thought I did so well. I didn't even have Cas's grace guiding me."

"Pretty impressive."

Noelle glared at Sam, sucking slowly on her cigarette. She blew the smoke into his face. "What do you _want,_ Sam? I know you're not up here talking to me out of the goodness of your heart."

"I'm just trying to help you get over your guilt so you can do your job," explained Sam, holding his hands up.

"Yeah, but you're doing it nicely. What gives?"

"I'm soulless, Noelle, not evil."

She took another drag, but it had burnt out. She lit a fifth cigarette. "How come you never try to help Dean over his guilt?"

"Dean's a lost cause. Also, he can just power through it and still get his work done. You're too new."

Noelle nodded, accepting that.

"So, anything that you think will help you to talk through?"

"No."

"Because it happens to every new hunter."

"No, Sam."

"Nothing you want to get off your chest?"

"No, and that includes my bra, so don't even think about making that joke."

Sam was respectfully quiet for a moment before trying one more time: "You don't even want to talk about your brother?"

"I _especially," _snapped Noelle, "do not want to talk about my brother."

"All right, fine. All I'm saying is that I have a big brother too. And I remember how I felt when he died. I probably would have benefited a lot from having someone to talk to afterwards."

Noelle glared at him distrustfully. "Someone with a soul. Why are you telling me this?"

"Like I said. I want you to be able to do your job." He placed his hand on her knee, gently, and Noelle fought the urge to cross her legs to make him move it. "I may not really care about anyone right now, but I have all my memories from when I did have a soul, and I can tell that back then, I would have cared about you a lot. I'm looking out for myself here; when I get my soul back, I don't want you to hate me, because I know we'll become good friends. I'm trying to save myself some awkwardness."

"Look, I don't hate you, Sam," she said. "I can't form an opinion one way or another. You don't have your soul right now. I don't know the real you, and I'm not extrapolating from there. When you get it back, it'll be a clean slate."

Sam nodded. "Okay. That's fair."

She didn't reply; what he had said was churning in his mind. Dean had died, and… come back to life. But it wasn't the same thing; he had been pulled out to save the world. But… still… "How did Dean die, Sam? He won't tell me."

"Look, I really can't," Sam said. "He told me not to."

"He did?"

"Yeah, Cas backed him up – two against one."

"Please?" she asked, leaning closer. "I just want to know. I guess I don't even have to know _how, _specifically_,_ just… why did he end up in Hell? Dean is a good person."

Sam looked like he was about to speak, then sighed. "I can't, Noelle."

"Sam…" She gave up, pulling on her cigarette and staring off at the street below them. It was a few minutes before he spoke again.

"Fine. But you have to pretend like you don't know."

"I will," she replied, smiling slightly at him. "I promise."

Sam smiled back, but it didn't reach his eyes – it never did. "He died because, well, I died first. I got stabbed, and I died in his arms." Noelle's jaw dropped. "He went to a crossroads demon immediately after. He sold his soul to bring me back to life. They gave him one year to live, then dragged him down to the Pit. Then four months later, Cas dragged him back out."

"Jesus Christ," Noelle muttered. "You can – sell your soul to get someone back from the dead?"

"Well—" Sam looked flustered. "No, not – not anymore. Hell has bigger things to worry about right now. But a couple of years ago, yeah, anyone could do it."

"I see," she replied suspiciously. "Bigger things to worry about. That makes sense." Hell liked souls; Noelle knew that much. She doubted very much that it would ever put collecting souls on hold, even in a battle against Heaven.

"But we have a deal, right?" he asked. "You're not going to let Dean or Cas know I told you?'

"No, of course not," she replied. "It'll stay between us. I promise."

"Good. Well, look… the kid… you didn't have a choice about him." Sam stood up, then bent down (all the way down, he was so tall) and squeezed her shoulder. "Don't blame yourself. You saved a helluva lot of people, and you saved him from learning that he was doing this. You did the right thing."

"Hey—Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I… Christian and I always had this joke," she said, hands shaking slightly from the memories. "There was this intersection. A four-way dirt intersection, and one of the roads, it led to our orchard. We called it the Crossroads. And every time we drove through it, one of us, without fail, we'd always be like, 'We're gonna meet our death at the Crossroads. We're gonna die here.' Kidding, you know? But… it was a death trap. The traffic lights didn't work half the time, and people would just fly past whether it was red or green or not working. Do you think…?"

"No, Noelle," said Sam. "Not all crossroads come with a demon, they have to be summoned."

"How?"

"Look, I've said too much," he said, giving her a stern look. "Dean's gonna kill me if he finds out I told you all this."

"He won't find out, I won't say a word. I promise. I'm sorry I asked."

Noelle watched Sam climb off the roof of the motel and drop himself down to the sidewalk below, not sure how to feel. Never having prayed before, she offered a short prayer up to whoever was listening that Quince's soul be carried up to Heaven and taken care of, left out of the battle. And then she turned her thoughts to Sam, and what he had told her, and why it didn't sit right… why she suddenly felt the night closing in about her, making her anxious and afraid. She pulled Christian's jacket close around her, wishing for him.

* * *

_Anyone reading this and telling me, "But Demon, Sambot doesn't give a fuck about anything he just said to Noelle," I want you all to take a deep breath and remember that Sasquatch is still way too smart for his own good, but a lot more evil and a better actor.  
_


	6. Can You Hear the Horses

Author's notes: Wow, you guys are super-sweet. Thanks for the positive feedback! Hope I don't disappoint. This chapter was intimidating to write because I tried to make it kind of like an episode, but… I don't know how it panned out. You tell me. (And yes, the title IS a Florence + The Machine reference. And yes, pookas ARE real. Sort of. I did my research.)

**Chapter Six**

Months went by. On Crowley's orders, Dean, Sam, and Noelle turned their attention to tracking the chain of werewolves through America by trying to determine who had infected Quince, who had infected that werewolf, and so on. Apparently, the alpha skinwalker had bitten it, and according to Dean, the alpha vampire had handed them their asses and split, but apparently, Crowley was banking on the third time being the charm. It was dull, monotonous work, broken by werewolf hunts that turned up unsuccessful more often than not, and the occasional poltergeist, woman in white, wendigo, and other such monsters. They kept losing the trail, until it seemed like they were going in circles, always latching on to different chains of werewolves from the one they had previously been on. Noelle found that she liked saving people. One family living in a house that positively bled ectoplasm had almost lost their youngest daughter, but Noelle, with a rock salt shell and a shout to Dean that her lighter had fallen in the living room and the bones were cached away in the fireplace but he'd better _hurry_, had saved the little girl. As she carried her to the front yard to join her parents and brothers, she realized that the toddler in her pink flannel nightgown was living, breathing, alive – and she, Noelle, had kept her that way. It wasn't much enough to keep her afloat through the nature of the work. People would die without her, without them. If she had to get sucked into a gig out of her control, at least she could save people.

She meditated for about a half an hour every day, and after several weeks of this, found that it helped immensely. She could pull facts out of thin air. Obscure, irrelevant facts, never the knowledge she needed, but that was coming, she knew it. God was absent, but he hadn't always been. Michael was trapped in Hell, but not burning there; the demons could not touch him. Castiel was an oddity; he had all the duties of an archangel, without all the power, and she was shocked when she learned how very young he was, as far as angels went. Yet he had the weight of Heaven and Earth riding on his shoulders. It made her sad to learn; she had come to see him as a teacher, a mentor, and she loved him like one, wishing she could alleviate some of his responsibilities. And yet through all of his struggles to keep his followers from switching sides, which was happening at an alarming rate, he kept up with her training. Thanks to him, Noelle could now teleport without nosebleeds, without even lightheadedness. They had encountered a few demons early on, trying to capture her, and after Noelle had gotten over the initial terror that came with seeing their true, grotesque faces under the faces of their hosts, Castiel had turned the tables on them, encasing them in devil's traps and using them to teach her how to exorcise them. That was still hard; depending on the strength of the demon, exorcisms could still leave her gasping and shuddering and unable to reach her grace at all for a few days after, but they also left the demon back where it belonged, so the tradeoff was worth it. To her delight, she could also put people to sleep, though they woke up after only a few minutes.

But as the angel part of her grew in strength, the resistance to temptation withered. All of the forbidden, sacrilegious knowledge should be available to her; she just had to seek it. She had only meditated on Hell once, and it had frightened the shit out of her. The stench that she could sense, as if it were a memory, became real before long, the heat of the flames licked at her bare arms and made the tattooed wings on her back prickle, like they were trying to spring free of her skin, the souls on the rack screamed, and she could not make her way through the piles of carnage to the knowledge she sought.

Noelle had been loathe to try again, once she broke herself free of the mental anguish and returned to the world of the living. For a few heartstopping seconds, she'd become convinced she was going to get trapped there and Dean would have a hernia when they couldn't wake her up, but she'd come back on her own, wide-eyed but all right. She decided then that she would learn to summon demons the old fashioned way: with books. The only problem with that was getting away from Sam, Dean, and Castiel for long enough to get some research done.

That was another thing: Dean and Cas were driving her nuts. She and Sam had been more cordial to each other after their chat on the roof, and he was content to let her do her own thing once she got better with her gun and her grace, Noelle found that she didn't mind him much anymore, but those two were going to be the death of her. Every so often, Cas returned from Heaven rather worse for wear – she could catch glimpses of what she assumed were his wings if he caught her coming just out of a meditation, and they looked haggard, like a molting swan, though Noelle knew it was from stress and getting his ass kicked. Dean had found the cure for his insomnia: throwing back a couple of mouthfuls of something that smelled illegal almost every night. Though with the combination of his Ent-sized brother's soul still in the Cage, the irrational guilt he felt over Noelle's very presence, and the clear fact that working under a demon gave him the jibblies, she could not blame him. All of this, plus the lack of angelic wrath had set the other two on edge, when Noelle had just been content not to question it. "They're planning something," Castiel had said as Noelle lay in bed, recovering after exorcising her first demon without help.

"Who?" she had replied without opening her eyes.

"The angels. Or they would have come for you already."

Now she did crack her eyes open, though the light in the motel room was blinding. "I dunno, Cas. You carved the Enochian sigil into me, so they have no way of tracking me. And maybe they haven't even heard yet."

"That's impossible. I'm certain they've heard. I just don't know what they're waiting for…" Castiel shook his head. "It's bad, Noelle."

"Look, I always carry the knife Dean gave me. Always. I can draw the banishing sigil in a second, so I'm set, okay? It gives me the mother of all headaches, but it's protection enough."

Castiel's face told her he did not agree.

It was for this sort of reason that he and Dean rarely let her out of their sight and she couldn't get at any books that would tell her what she needed to know. The constant babysitting was annoying enough, but there was also the sense Noelle got that the two of them were hiding something from her, or from themselves. There were gazes that lingered a bit too long, little arguments that were a bit too meaningless, and every time Noelle brushed Cas's grace with her own, she could sense Dean, as if he were in the room with them – as if he were constantly on Castiel's mind. It seemed a lot like love to her, but Castiel had his responsibilities (not to mention the fact that he handled emotions about as clumsily as she had handled the gun when Sam first gave it to her) and Dean was a just whole bucket of issues. She wished they were friends from class or something; she would be trying with all of her might to hook them up. Watching them have wild, passionate eyesex and pretend they weren't one more time would make her smash their heads together, regardless of the fact that Dean had about ninety pounds and ten inches on her and Cas's head would only move if he allowed her to move it. But with everything that was happening now, she figured it would be best not to get involved. For now, anyway. Until it became too much to bear and she just had to interfere for better or worse.

And Christmas was coming. Noelle wanted nothing to do with it, and thankfully, Dean didn't seem to either – and the thought of Sam or Cas getting the Christmas spirit was downright laughable. There was no Christmas without Christian. Every time a Christmas carol came on the radio, every time she saw decorations or a Salvation Army Santa, it felt like a knife in her heart. Christmas wasn't a day on the calendar – it was spending the night before outside in the freezing cold, decorating their favorite apple tree instead of an evergreen in their living room. It was Christian climbing up onto the roof and dropping the non-breakable presents down the chimney, half to Noelle's amusement and half to her terror. It was drinking eggnog, their secret shared tradition since even before their parents died. No, without her brother, December 25th was just a date. Christmas had ceased to exist. Noelle would have thanked God, if there were a God to thank, for the unseasonable warmth; it made it easier to forget the time of the year.

She was sitting at the motel room table opposite Sam, doodling sigils on the stationary, when Sam looked up from his laptop.

"I think we may have something here," he said. "A woman in Massapequa, New York was found dead in a ditch a few miles away from her house, authorities say she was trampled by a horse."

"How is that something?" asked Dean irritably.

"Well, there are no hoof prints to or from the ditch, and no human prints, either. She wasn't dragged there, and she definitely didn't drag herself." Sam gave him a sarcastic, self-righteous smile. "Local authorities are baffled. They say it's like she just appeared there, already trampled and already dead."

"Eh," said Dean. "Well, werewolf trail's gone cold. We might as well check it out. I'll leave a message for Cas, let him know where we're going."

Noelle drew a triangle around the sigil she'd just finished. "No chance that phantom tramply horses are Seals, is there?"

"I think that thing in New Haven was a freak occurrence, Evie," said Dean, pulling on his jacket. "I don't think Seals are breaking."

"Or they are and we've been missing them," piped up Sam.

"Impossible, we've been scouring every paper printed in the country. Even the bullshit Internet hoaxes."

"Well, there you have it," said Dean. "We wouldn't be missin' them if they were breaking. I don't think we have anything to worry about."

"We have tons to worry about."

"Shut up, Sam."

#

When Castiel returned to Earth and got Dean's message, the brothers and Noelle were already in New York. He met Noelle in their motel room; she was sitting at the desk, rolling cigarettes from a bag of tobacco and tucking them into a small wallet-like case. "Hey, Cas," she said without looking up.

"Hello," he replied. "Where are they?"

"Policing up the family of the poor woman who got killed." Noelle closed her case and tucked it into her bag. "Questioning them and everything else. And I found something they're going to want to know when they come back."

"Oh?" Castiel sat on the desk beside her, and Noelle turned her computer around so he could read the article she'd pulled up.

"Check it out. The local paper just printed this article, someone else was found a few hours ago in another ditch. Been dead since last night. Same thing – like they fell from the sky, already trampled."

"What's the connection between the two?" Castiel asked. Having spent more time than ever with the Winchesters actually working cases, rather than stopping the Apocalypse, he had learned a lot about hunting. It was interesting, to say the least. He could see how people like Dean, whose rage and dysfunction only translated itself into one outlet, stuck with the job even if it destroyed them. To some extent, it reminded him of being an angel. For the first time (though Castiel had been scarcely more than a child when the archangel ran away from home), he had empathy for Gabriel's decision to disappear.

"I dunno, that's the thing. This time, it was a seventeen-year-old boy. Different part of town, different sex, age—there's nothing to even suggest they knew each other. I just don't get it…" She shook her head. "I'm gonna go talk to the family."

"I'll come with you."

"No, no. It's better if I go alone. You can stick around if you want, just keep out of sight." She scribbled a note for Sam and Dean and stood up, adjusting her tank top. "Let's hit it."

#

The house was small and quaint, and the backyard fence was open, through which Noelle could see two little girls playing listlessly on the swings. The older one was pushing her younger sister, trying to get her to pump her legs, but Noelle could tell by both of their faces they knew about their brother's death. She walked up the porch, noting sadly how well-landscaped the lawn was, and rang the doorbell, shifting the box of éclairs in her arms and glancing over to Cas, who was lurking down the street. He gave her a thumbs up, and she smiled briefly, until a woman who looked far too young to have a seventeen-year-old son opened the door, balancing a baby on her hip.

"Yes, can I help you?" she asked. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her voice sounded wet, like she had just stopped crying and was very close to starting again.

"Mrs. Danvers?" said Noelle, her voice respectfully quiet. "My name is Jessica Hamby. I went to high school with Evan—I just wanted to offer my condolences. These are for you." She held up the box. "May I come in?"

"Oh—of course."

Noelle stepped inside the open door and placed the box on the coffee table, as Mrs. Danvers sat in the armchair and motioned for Noelle to sit on the couch opposite it. Their tree was up, but unadorned; a bin of ornaments stood beside it. "Can I get you anything, Jessica?

"No, no thank you." Noelle looked at the picture on the coffee table: it was a framed photo of Evan, his two little sisters clinging to his legs like monkeys and his arm around his very pregnant mother. Everyone was smiling as if they had not a care in the world. "It's not fair… Evan was a real sweetie."

"He, um…" Mrs. Danvers wiped at her eyes. "He never mentioned you before."

"Well, we weren't exactly best friends, but we had lunch together a couple years in a row. Always said hi to me in the hallway. I'm up at U Albany now, I uh…" she shrugged. "I came down for winter break, and… well, the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was that article. I'm… words cannot describe how sorry I am, Mrs. Danvers."

"It was sweet of you to come," Mrs. Danvers said, smiling through filmy eyes. "I'm sure… Evan is happy you're here."

"I hope so," replied Noelle. "So… no one really knows how it happened? I mean, how it really happened?"

The tears spilled down the woman's face, and Noelle handed her a tissue from the box beside the picture. The baby in her arms looked at his mother's face. "No," she whispered. "I called the stable, but… they said all of their horses were bolted in their stalls, all night."

"The stable?" _Yahtzee_, as Dean would have said_._

"He… went there yesterday." Mrs. Danvers blew her nose. "With Marissa. They had had a fight, you know how those two are – well – w-were – and he was making it up to her by taking her on a trail ride."

"Them and their fights," agreed Noelle. "What stable was that, again? I haven't been back since August."

"Sheridan Farms," said Mrs. Danvers. "Evan, he… hated horses. For him to go this way…" She started crying again, and Noelle reached across the coffee table and placed her hand on the woman's. The baby started crying as well. "Oh, sh-h-h, Tyler… there, there…" Mrs. Danvers stood up, Noelle following suit. "Thank you for stopping by, sweetheart. You didn't have to."

"Of course I did," replied Noelle. The message was loud and clear: I appreciate the condolences, but please get the hell out of my house and let me mourn my son. "And if there's anything I can do…"

"Oh no, no, we're… we'll manage." Mrs. Danvers wiped at her eyes again. "Just… keep him in your prayers, for me. For him."

"I will." Noelle squeezed her hand gently. "Take care now."

She left the house and met Castiel halfway up the block. "Dean just called," he said, taking her wrist, and they were back in the motel room.

"What'd you get?" Dean asked immediately, standing up from the table.

"Well, the kid hated horses," said Noelle, who, by now, was completely unfazed by being suddenly zapped somewhere; Cas had done it to her more in the months she had been with them than he had done it to Sam and Dean combined in all the time they'd known him. "And yesterday, he took his girlfriend on a trail ride at—"

"Sheridan Farms?" interrupted Sam. Noelle nodded. "Looks like we've got our common denominator. The woman from the first article went to the same place with her husband and daughter two days ago. We've got our next move."

"Time for a trail ride." Noelle grinned. "I haven't been horseback riding in ages."

"Yeah, well, don't get too excited," said Dean. "We figure out what this thing is, then we go. We're not askin' for it until we know what we're up against."

"Good plan." Noelle sat cross-legged on her bed, still beaming. "Still, though. Horses."

"You look excited."

"You don't even know, I love horses."

"You're probably safe, then," said Sam. He was booting up his computer. "Our lady was afraid of horses too. Daughter was insistent on going the other day, the dad said. He wouldn't let us see her, she said it was her fault and locked herself in her room."

"Poor girl," said Noelle. "You know, for both of them to be afraid… it's strange. Horses can tell when their riders are scared."

"Oh yeah?" asked Dean.

"Yeah. They get skittish, they're more likely to buck and throw the rider off if they get spooked. People have been trampled that way."

"Well, yeah, but these people both came back from the trail ride in one piece, you know? Came home, had dinner, went to bed, and when their families woke up, they weren't there. What kind of horse kidnaps people from their houses?"

Noelle shrugged. "You got me, dude."

"It sounds vaguely familiar," said Sam. "Can't remember exactly, but I feel like I've read some lore on horses like this."

"You're the research man." Noelle looked over at Castiel. "Just Google 'people-snatching killer horses.' _You're_ awfully quiet."

"I have nothing to add," he said. "I've never heard of anything like this. 'People-snatching killer horses' are none of Heaven's concern."

"Oh yeah? Ever been on a horse, Father Buzzkill?"

"No," replied Castiel grumpily over Dean's laughter.

"She got you, Cas. S'alright, you just hold the reins and say 'whoa' if it blows your feathers off."

"These horses are gonna eat you guys alive," Noelle said. "Have _you _ever been on a horse?"

Dean continued to smile, but it faded and he reluctantly conceded, "No."

"Exactly."

"Aha," said Sam, turning his laptop around. Noelle and Dean leaned in to see. "It's a pooka."

"It's a what?" asked Dean blankly.

"A _pooka_," repeated Sam, smiling as if the name amused him (though who could blame him?). "It's a mythological creature from Irish folk lore – they call it a fairy, but that's the name a lot of cultures give to things that they don't understand. It's like any other creature we've been up against."

"Well, that's good," said Dean. "God knows we don't need to deal with any more fairies."

"Yeah."

"So, what does this thing do, Sam?" asked Noelle, leaning over the back of his chair.

"Well, legend goes that it's a 'sleek, black horse with luminescent yellow eyes.' Gets its kicks creating mayhem. It can mimic a human voice, and it'll stand outside someone's door, calling for them, until the person comes out and it throws them on its back and it rides them to death. Literally. If they refuse to come out, the thing will knock down their gates, vandalize their property, blah blah blah… yeah. _Poo-_ka," he said again with that little borderline mirthless grin.

"There was no vandalism on either of the victims' houses, so whatever it said to them, it must've been convincing," said Noelle.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Great, Evie. Now how do we waste it?"

"How do you think?" replied Sam.

Dean grinned broadly. "Silver bullets. All right, let's get the hell over to the horsey farms and make this thing into glue."

#

The car pulled up in front of a fence with a gate in the middle, in front of a large open field. Several hundred yards in stood a large red barn, boasting a sign with a horse mid-gallop and the words _Sheridan Farms and Pastures_ carved below its hooves. The brothers, Castiel, and Noelle left the car and headed up the path, and Noelle breathed deep, smelling the turf and the hay and the horse sweat. She hadn't gone horseback riding since her fifteenth birthday.

The proprietor was a smiling, freckled redhead with glasses and her hands in her back pockets, looking like she were in her early forties. "What can I do for you guys?" she asked as they entered the barn. Noelle looked at the horseshoes hanging on the walls, the sets of tack and the riding spurs. God, she loved horses.

"Hi," she said before anyone else could speak. The plan in her mind had been developing since the motel room. To hell with letting things develop naturally. "I'm Helena, these are my cousins Gerard and Mikey, and Gerard's partner, Frank." Dean spluttered and Sam snorted behind her. She couldn't see Castiel's face, but she would have killed to be able to. The proprietor raised her eyebrows.

"Sorry," said Sam immediately. "It's just that we've seen it coming for years. We're glad they finally admitted it."

"All right, there, Mikey," said Dean tightly, elbowing him. "That's enough about our personal lives, you freak."

"Ah, no worries, sir, we're pretty liberal over here," said the woman with a smile. "Love is love. My name's Carly Sheridan, I own the barn. You guys here for a trail ride?"

"Yes ma'am," said Dean. "Helena here, she loves horses. Said we just _had _to try it and all that."

"Well, Helena's right, there's nothing quite like it. Follow me, guys."

Noelle turned to do just that, and behind Carly's back, Dean delivered a smack to her elbow, mouthing, _I'm gonna kill you._

_So worth it,_ she mouthed back, grinning. He shook his head, glaring, and she laughed as he put his arm around Cas and whispered something in his ear. Cas turned around and looked at her quizzically. She stifled a guffaw.

Carly opened the stable doors, flooding the dusty room with sunlight. "Well, here we are," she said over one of the horses' nickering. "Stephen?" she called. "In here?"

"Yeah! Oh, goddammit—!" A gangly kid lurched out of one of the stalls, shaking his foot. "Ugh, great—"

"Stepped in shit?" said Carla. "Ignore it, hon. Can you get Bilberry, Lovecraft, Ozzy, and Firenze ready, please? I'm gonna be right in my office."

"Trail riders?" asked Stephen, stepping over to them and putting his manure-slimed foot in a bucket. "God_dammit_-!"

"Steve," prompted Carla affectionately.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it, Carl. I'm Stephen," he said, holding out his hand to Dean, who shook it, as Carla left the barn.

"Uh, Gerard. Nice to meet you, Stephen. This is Frank, Mikey, and Helena."

"Hi, nice to meet you guys." Stephen smiled at Noelle, who smiled back as the bucket finally fell from his foot.

"So, can we see our horses, please, Stephen?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah yeah, sure thing, sure—this here is Firenze," he said, undoing the nearest stall, which contained the biggest horse Noelle had ever seen. He was pure white and looked noble enough to be a unicorn, without the horn. "I think the big guy should take him."

"Yeah, no arguments there," said Dean. Sam furrowed his brows. "Say, uh, Stephen – you know about the killings, right?"

Stephen paused, adjusting Firenze's saddle. "Uh, yeah. I knew Evan, he was a year older than me in school. He was here the other day with Marissa, his girlfriend, y'know? Poor guy was scared of horses…" He glanced up, flustered now. "The police already came and everything. It wasn't our horses – they've all been in the stables all night. We would have known if they got out. And besides, if they had, they would've had to let themselves back in and latch the stalls back up, so—"

"Hey, hey, hey, no one's accusing anyone of anything," said Dean. "Just take it easy – hey, Frank, what are you doing?"

Castiel was standing in front of the palomino horse one stall over, looking vaguely terrified as it sniffed his head. Noelle tried not to laugh.

"Oh, looks like Lovecraft likes you," said Stephen. "You can ride him, he's real great for first-timers."

"That's… reassuring…" Castiel awkwardly touched the horse's muzzle. "Very reassuring."

Dean elbowed Noelle. "Hey," he muttered in her ear, "notice anything about these last two horses he's letting out?"

Noelle watched Stephen lead another pair out of their stalls. "Both black. Sweet. Although the luminescent eyes are a lot less luminescent than I anticipated… how do we know which one is the pooka?"

"Or if either of them are…" Dean shrugged. "I dunno, maybe it's not one of the horses, maybe it's just connected to the stable somehow… either way, doesn't matter. Switch horses with Sam."

"I'm sorry, what?" demanded Noelle.

"Look, if it _is _a creature and not some kind of ghost horse, the best chance is that it's one of these black horses and I don't want the damn thing coming after you. Switch with Sam."

"No," she said frankly.

"Noelle, for god's sake—"

"No, Dean."

"What, you think we're gonna have a nice relaxing ride?"

"_Don't,"_ snapped Noelle, "talk to me like I haven't been on five dozen hunts with you already, Dean. If it comes after me, I ventilate it with a silver bullet. Done. And besides, _I'm _not scared of horses. Even if I end up with the pooka, I'm set."

He glared daggers at her. "I don't like it."

"I don't care."

"Hey, uh…"

"What?" they demanded at the same time. Stephen flinched.

"Uh… we about ready?"

#

Castiel decided that horses were for freaks like Noelle. It felt good to make that call, because he could tell that he wasn't the only one who hadn't enjoyed their day, though his reasons were different from Sam and Dean's. Dean spent the entire car ride back to the motel room complaining that his legs didn't work anymore, and Sam, by his expression and louder complaining, hadn't fared much better, but what Castiel had hated about the hour they spent on the horses was the pointlessness of it. There were a thousand things he could be doing in Heaven, and he had been sitting on the back of a smelly horse, on a trail ride. The only one who had seemed to have any fun at all the entire time was Noelle, who, for the entire uneventful ride, had kept this small smile on her face, running her fingers through the mane of the creature that for all they knew, could have been the very thing trampling innocent people to death. For all the time they spent together, with and without Sam and Dean, and all that he had learned about her, Castiel still did not understand Noelle.

"I hate the waiting game," she was saying, leaning against the headboard of her bed and sharpening the knife Dean had given her.

"Yeah, well, I hate the pretending-you're-_gay_ game," shot back Dean. "Where the hell'd you get those aliases from, anyway?"

"I just dig My Chem," she replied.

"What – My Chem, what the hell is that?"

Noelle put the knife down. "My Chemical Romance?"

Dean frowned, clearly not comprehending. "Your what?"

"Dude, can you even _name_ for me three bands formed after nineteen-eighty-five?"

"Oh shut up, Noelle."

She snickered, turning her attention back to her knife. Castiel, wishing the conversation to be over, as it was flying right over his head, glanced at Sam. "Is there anything in particular that I'm needed for right now?" he asked. "I would like to go back to Heaven for a few hours."

"Well, if the horse you were on was the pooka, it's going to come after you, so you can't leave," said Sam matter-of-factly. "Or we've got nothing to shoot."

"Besides, you were just there this morning," added Dean.

"The more often I'm there, the better."

"A few months ago, you were itching for a chance to chill here more, now suddenly you want to go back?"

"Dean…" Castiel met Dean's eyes, read the confusion there, and fought the urge to lay his head in his palm. He still felt like the weight was crushing him, but over the past few months, the pain had become almost physical. His shoulders ached like he was mortal again. "My side is weakening with every passing day, and if we fail—"

"You know what, Cas?" interrupted Dean, with an edge to his voice that never boded well. "Screw them."

Castiel narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"Screw Heaven. What's Heaven done for you? Ever? Let them rip each others' feathers out, I mean, who gives a shit anymore?"

"The angels who haven't fallen to corruption," Castiel bit the words out of his mouth. "The people on Earth who will die if the Apocalypse starts. Again."

"The Apocalypse – dude, there can't be another Apocalypse." Dean stood up and strode over to Castiel, who stood up as well so Dean could not tower over him the way he was so fond of doing. "The Seals, the last time. The Seal that got Lucifer out of the Cage was Lilith's death. The death of the original demon. She can't die twice."

"Why not?" asked Sam. "I've died twice. Three… four times, actually. I think. You've died about three times, maybe four, I don't remember, and that's _not_ including all the times Gabriel wasted you _or _the two times you were supposed to die and didn't. Cas got ganked by Raphael and then again by Lucifer and here he is. If angels can be resurrected, why not demons?"

"Dammit, Sam—"

"You guys have died a _lot," _murmured Noelle, unperturbed by the exchange taking place.

"Sam is right," said Castiel once Dean was finished glaring at her. "We can't let Raphael and his followers prevail."

Dean rubbed his face, dragging his palm down his mouth – his way of pausing a situation, Castiel had noticed – and locked eyes. "Can I talk to you outside for a second?" Sam and Noelle glanced at each other.

"All right," replied Castiel. He followed Dean out of the room, pushing his hands into the pockets of his trenchcoat, and Dean shut the door behind them.

"Look," he said immediately, his voice softer than before, "I get it, all right? Maybe not the, you know, the details, but I've been there. You feel like the world rests on _you_, and it doesn't matter how screwed you get in the bargain as long as you do your job. Sound familiar?"

"I understand the parallels, Dean," said Castiel wearily. He had to make Dean shut up; hearing this from a source other than his own mind was only making it harder to continue fighting. "However—"

"No, don't say '_however_,' Cas," Dean cut in. "All right? How much have you sacrificed for those bastards up there? Haven't you given them enough?"

"Dean…" For a moment, Castiel doubted the wisdom of what he was about to say, then went ahead and said it anyway. "If you really feel this way about responsibility, why have you returned to hunting?"

"Don't turn this around on me," Dean growled.

"If you could just turn away from saving people, why haven't you?"

"Cas—"

"I'm not saying this to corner you, Dean," said Castiel, placing his hand on Dean's arm. "I'm simply trying to make you understand why I can't give up on Heaven." He let his hand fall and turned away, this time not bothering to censor himself as he added, "As much as I wish I could."

A few seconds passed before those words seemed to sink in. "So you _are _sick of it."

"Of course I'm sick of it." Castiel's voice was clipped. He was now wishing he had said nothing. "I'm losing angels in combat, and dozens more are switching sides. Everyone is sick of it. We're tired, Dean. All of us. And I'm leading the losing side… why do you think I've invested so much time in staying here?"

"Honestly, I assumed it was to help Noelle develop her freaky angel crap," said Dean. "Like you said."

"Noelle no longer needs my guidance. Her powers are nowhere near their full potential, but that's up to her now. I've given her all I can." Castiel watched Dean's face soften, and he hardened his resolve against the melancholy that had been welling in his mind since the conversation began. "Is it so hard to believe that I prefer the company of my friends to ambushes and betrayals and watching any advantage we have over them slip out of our hands?"

"Well, uh… no," said Dean frankly, "not when you put it like that."

Castiel smiled despite the situation. Dean's mannerisms… he looked at them fondly.

"What's it like up there, Cas?" he asked. "Full-out guerilla warfare? Holy Holocaust? The Salem Angel Trials?"

"It is… difficult. Dean. There are angels even on my side who want me dead… no brotherhood exists any longer. No one is trustworthy."

"Explain to me how someone who wants to waste you is on your side."

"I am, uh…" For the second time in only a couple of minutes, Castiel wished he had remained silent. Or lied. "Many angels, um… out-angel me." He saw the ghost of a smile on Dean's face at his use of their slang. "There are those stronger than I who oppose Raphael, and they wish to lead – wish me to either step down or die."

"Dude," said Dean, holding out his hands, "problem freakin' solved. Give your job to some nice archangel. You don't even have to ditch the war that way if you don't want, but at least it's not all on you."

"What I lack in strength, compared to certain others, I make up for in morality," said Castiel firmly, trying to make himself believe it. "And just because there are stronger angels, it does not mean I am too weak to lead half of Heaven."

"Oh, I get it. If you want something done right, do it yourself, that kind of thing?"

"Precisely."

"It's bullshit, Cas." Dean surveyed him. His face had taken on that curious lack of expression that told Castiel more than he knew Dean intended to show him. "We're Team Free Will, man. This gig's only yours if you want it."

Castiel frowned. "We're Team… what?"

"Oh, right, you were out cold that time."

"I don't—"

"Dean?" called a disembodied voice, from the direction of the street. It belonged to a woman. The color vanished from Dean's face.

"Lisa?"

He had told Castiel about Lisa and about Ben, about the blissful year he had spent as a normal man. The mention of her still stirred up that same strange emotion: it was similar to how he now felt about Gabriel, who had given up his loyalty and walked the Earth at his leisure; there was empathy for him, but there was envy, as well. But for him to be envious of Lisa made no sense. But that didn't matter at the moment, because Castiel knew that was not Lisa.

"Dean," he began, but Dean was already heading in the direction from which the voice had come, walking with long, quick strides. Castiel reached for Noelle's grace and told her, _We may need the guns, come outside_, before following Dean to the street. "Dean," he repeated. Dean was not listening.

He was standing on the sidewalk, a stretch of pavement gaping between him and the woman on the opposite side. Castiel supposed she was beautiful, her bare arms folded across her chest to keep them warm, her dark hair spilling over one shoulder.

"Dean," she said again. "I need to see you…"

"I don't believe it," he half-whispered, taking a step towards her. Castiel was about to grab his elbow and ask him if he was insane, when Noelle and Sam sprinted up. Sam stopped in his tracks, staring at her, and Noelle's hand disappeared behind her back where Castiel knew she had her gun.

"Lisa," said Sam, surprised.

Noelle turned to him. "This is Lisa?"

"Replaced me already, Dean?" Lisa's voice was so full of heartbreak that Castiel wondered for a brief moment if Dean's very capable judgment would falter.

"No," he said, "of course not, Lise."

"Dean." Sam's voice sounded as if he were about to follow up by asking, "Are you kidding?"

"Shut up, Sam!" Dean turned around and stared at his brother, who, after a moment, nodded ever so slightly. Noelle's eyes flicked from Dean to Sam, and Castiel placed his hand on hers where it clasped her gun, to keep her finger from the trigger. "Lisa… how did you find us here?"

"It doesn't matter," she breathed from the other side. "I'm here now… I've made an awful mistake. Can I please talk to you…?"

"Yeah…" He slowly crossed the street towards her. "Of course, Lise."

Noelle grabbed Castiel's arm. "What the hell?" she hissed. "Are you all nuts? That can't possibly be Lisa, there's no way she could have tracked us here—"

"Exactly," Castiel murmured. "Just watch."

By now, Dean had reached her, and she was sliding her palm onto his cheek. Castiel could see agony scribed across his face, and could only imagine the scope of his pain. The envy (if it was envy) melted away from him in that moment, and if he could have given Dean that year back and let him live the rest of his life with Lisa and her son, he would have granted him this without a second thought. Dean had suffered enough.

"Cas," said Noelle. He could tell by the change in her voice that she had figured out what was happening, "I hate this plan."

Lisa whispered something in his ear, then embraced him, and Castiel hated this plan too, most of all the mix of longing and desperation on Dean's face in the split second before she whirled around in his arms, her own arms growing longer into legs, hands and feet bursting into grotesque hooves, and as the horse reared up, mad yellow eyes gleaming, Dean roared from its back, "SAM, NOW!"

But the pooka galloped off, Sam's bullet barely grazing its tail.

"Shit," he said casually. "Thing's fast. Noelle, get in the car."

"Jesus _Christ,_" she whispered, and she was about to bolt for the Impala when Castiel grabbed her arm.

"Give me your gun," he said. She yanked it out of her jeans and pressed it into his hands.

"Don't miss!" she called over her shoulder, sprinting off after Sam, who was already in the driver's seat.

"I won't." The words were spoken with conviction, but drowned out by the sound of screaming tires as Sam hit the gas and shot into the night.

He could not locate Dean because of the sigils, but he could locate the horse by its sound alone, if he opened Jimmy's ears. It had taken off through the sidestreets, heading at lightning speed for a knot of woods. Castiel knew it would be no use to teleport; the horse was moving too fast. They would miss each other unless he could get onto its back, but it was much easier to gauge landing in a moving car than on a galloping horse. It was running in zigzags, so appearing in its path was useless—there _was_ no path. He could not discern a destination, but he could see its mad dash through the woods, and he could see Dean clinging to its mane for dear life, screaming at it to _slow down, Black Ugly!_ Castiel offered a brief prayer that Dean would not fall off and get killed to a Father he knew had stopped listening long ago, then returned his full attention to the pooka.

It felt like hours later when it finally stopped and bucked Dean off its back, hours during which Castiel remained standing on the sidewalk in front of the motel. The peaceful, soft silence of the street, broken only by the occasional bark of a dog or rumble of a passing car, seared at his nerves. The stillness was maddening because Dean was in peril and Castiel had to stand in the serenity of the sidewalk until he could help. Sam and Noelle would never be able to follow it in the car, would never get there in time. The pooka stopped and Castiel was there in half a second, before Dean had finished gasping the air back into his lungs from where he lay on his back in the grass. It was still on its hind legs, front hooves coming down fast, aimed directly at Dean's chest.

Castiel pulled the trigger.

The pooka keened, a whinny that seemed to rent through Dean's ears like wrenching, screeching metal, because he yelled in pain with the breath he had barely sucked in and shoved his fists to his ears before the beast fell heavily on his arm, shoulder first, not dead, but hurt. Castiel dropped to the turf and dragged Dean out from under its side, supporting his weight almost entirely. Dean grabbed the gun from the grass as Castiel pulled him to his feet, and shot three bullets into the pooka's chest, one after the other. Its hitching breath stopped and it dissolved into fog, blowing gently away on the night wind, an anticlimactic end for the monster that had almost trampled Dean to death. Castiel looked at him. He was leaning heavily on the angel, attempting to grin.

"Gotta get it in the heart, dude."

"You're welcome," replied Castiel, pulling Dean's arm over his shoulder. He found himself smiling.

#

Cas had called Noelle to tell her the pooka was dead and he was taking Dean back to the motel room to heal him, but he was all right. Noelle had relayed the message to Sam, who'd nodded without remarking and turned the car around. She was now helping him load it up, breathing in the moist morning air. Castiel had put Dean to sleep soon after Sam and Noelle returned, and she had succeeded in convincing Sam to let him wake up on his own, to try and make up for all of the sleep he had been missing. Cas was due back from Heaven any minute; hopefully, Dean would wake up soon, and they could grab breakfast and hit the road.

"All right. Okay, thanks. Yeah." Sam closed his phone and tucked it into his pocket. "That was the stable. Bilberry the horse is missing, and its stall was unlocked. It must have locked itself back in when it came back the other two nights."

"Yeah, probably. And at least now we know why no one's property was vandalized – it took the form of someone they loved to lure them out." Noelle shut the trunk and they headed back into their room, where Castiel had taken a seat on Dean's bed. He was fiddling with the gun. "Hey, Cas."

"Hello."

"You know, something's bugging me about last night," said Sam. "Once it stopped running and you angel'd over to it – why bother shooting it? Why didn't you just smite it, or whatever?"

Castiel frowned at the firearm he was holding, turning it over and over in his hands. "I don't know," he said quietly. "It didn't even occur to me."

* * *

_Nice long chapter for you lovely folks!_


	7. The Hunted Hunter

Author's notes: There's het in this chapter, if my understanding of fanfiction-jargon is correct and "het" refers to hetero-steaminess. In a Dean/Cas fic. I know, it's somewhat fandom-blasphemous. It doesn't go very far, but I thought I'd warn you ahead of time. We'll pretend it's in honor of Valentine's Day. Anyone mind telling me if the scene in this chapter warrants a rating change?

On an unrelated note, I re-watched the season six episode where Cas first comes back, and when he tells Dean he "wasn't gonna mention" their profound bond to Sam, did anyone else think that the way he said it sounded as if they had talked about this previously? Like Dean had told Cas not to mention the fact that they're madly, madly in love to Sam, and Cas was kinda like, "What do you want me to say? He asked! Don't be mad! And while you're at it, stop treating me like your bitch after I raised you from perdition and rebelled for you and exploded for you twice and all of the other things I've done for you."

Someone on LiveJournal summed up season six quite nicely in five words: "Everyone's a dick to Cas."

**Chapter Seven**

Several days after the pooka case had been closed, Noelle and Dean were in the Impala, driving back to the motel three hours away that Sam had checked them into. Supposedly, there were signs of vampire activity in the town where they were staying, and since it was about halfway between Werewolf Point A and Werewolf Point B, it seemed like a pretty good place to set up camp. They had discovered two possible leads on the identity of the one who had bitten their latest werewolf, and agreed to split up to investigate both leads before the trail went cold again. Crowley had shown his smug face several days ago; the suggestion was his. No one was happy about it, but since no one could think of any better options, they had gone along with it. Before they parted, Dean had pulled Sam aside, and though Noelle could not hear exactly what was being said, she could guess: If your old self would hesitate, don't act. But in gruffer, more Dean-like terms.

The case the two of them had taken turned out to be a bust: their potential man had taken off just before they got to Delaware, if he had ever been there at all. All in all, it had been a waste of a trip, especially since events had conspired against Noelle and she hadn't gotten the chance to smoke all day. She leaned against the window, gazing up at the bleak, overcast sky, tapping her fingers on her leg, shuffling her feet. Black Sabbath poured from the speakers. Noelle tried to distract herself by focusing on the irony of Dean listening to Black Sabbath, thinking about the literal black Sabbath they had crashed about a month ago, but that train of thought derailed before a minute was up, and she caved.

"Dean…?"

"No."

"Then at least pull over?"

"No, we're making great time. 'Cept for this jackass in the semi behind us, he's pissing me off."

"We'll be on the road again in fifteen minutes."

"I'm not stopping the car."

"Dinner's on me?"

"No, Evie."

She folded her arms, turning her head back to the window and making her best puppy-dog face, fully aware that Dean could see her reflection. Cas was never conscious of the fact that he was doing it, but with the slightest downward incline of his head and subtle widening of his eyes, Dean melted. She had heard a couple of times from Bobby that when Sam still had a soul, he could have an even better effect on Dean (and employed it often to get what he wanted, fully aware of what he was doing). Noelle was not Dean's Sammy, nor was she the blue-eyed angel who would rather spend time with Dean than repair Heaven, but she had weaseled more than a couple of trips to the mall out of Christian when she was in high school with a couple of well-placed pouts. She kept her gaze on the trees lining the interstate as they flew by, careful not to look at Dean lest he realize she was making that face on purpose, and gave a mental cheer when he sighed loudly a few seconds later.

"Just blow that shit out the window," he said, rolling hers down. "I do _not _want my baby to reek."

"Don't worry, I always stand downwind when I smoke around Cas," she told him with a grin, extracting a cigarette from her case and lighting up. He glared at her for a few seconds before turning his attention back to the road, ignoring her laughter.

She sat in contented silence once it died away, grinning and trying (and failing) to blow smoke rings out the window. Dean glanced over at her. "You know you should probably quit."

"What reason could you possibly give me that you haven't given me eighty times already?" she asked, reclining back in the seat.

"Hey, feet off the dash, Noelle, c'mon." He swatted at her shin and she put her legs down. "And I'm serious. Hunters gotta be able to run."

"I can run, dude, you know that. Being part-angel rocks."

"Look, all I'm sayin' is that if we gotta get you one of those tracheotomies or somethin', I'm gonna be pissed."

Noelle laughed a little, but let her smile fade. "Not funny."

"Yeah, I know…"

They fell into a silence that lasted until Noelle had pitched her cigarette and Dean had closed the windows, before she asked, "So… you and Cas."

"Yeah, my guardian angel," he replied, grinning.

Noelle raised her eyebrows. "Right…" She kept looking at him expectantly, until he rolled his eyes.

"Do I really come off as gay to you?"

"Well, no."

"So there."

She snorted. "'So there'? What are you, in fourth grade? Look, Dean, I think this goes beyond gay or straight or anything else—"

"What else?"

"Dude, you can't possibly be thirty-two and not know that there are more than two sexual orientations." He grinned triumphantly; Noelle smacked his arm. "Don't try to change the subject."

"I wasn't!"

"Yes you totally were, you were trying to get me to go off on a tangent!"

Dean's cocky grin stayed put. "Look, I'm sorry, Evie, I just don't see the point in talking about this. Dudes just don't do it for me. And even if they did, Cas has his sacred janitorial duties, and I got you and Sam's soul to worry about."

"Oh, because Cas isn't helping train me _or _get Sam's soul back."

"All right, you know what? You can walk."

"Funny." Neither of them suggested she teleport to Sam, because both knew she would prefer to spend hours in the car than in the motel room with him. Dean didn't know all of it, but Noelle didn't want to be alone with Sam. He still thought it was because Sam creeped her out – which he still kind of did, but she could deal with that. The truth was that Noelle didn't trust herself not to ask him more about crossroads demons. And she knew that if she said too much, Sam would guess her plans and tell Dean and Castiel, and she would be screwed.

She fidgeted in her seat, feeling extremely guilty. She knew her plan would make Dean want to kill her, especially since she was pretty sure his deal to save Sam four years ago was not the Winchesters' first experience with trading one life for another. The brothers were close-mouthed about their lives before Cas had shown up and told them they had to stop the Apocalypse, but she had gleaned a few things. Mostly, snippets of their past came out when she made a mistake on a hunt and Dean regaled her (in a dull roar and with a lot of angry pacing) with a tale of how he or Sam had made a similar mistake when they were kids and their father had had to pull one or the other out of hot water. The sentiment was always "make mistakes and people die," but Noelle had become a much better hunter as the months passed. She had a feeling it was because of this mysterious father that Sam and Dean had been able to save her from digging her own grave so many times at the beginning, but she hadn't needed saving on the past dozen or so hunts, except for the times when sheer bad luck landed her in a tight spot. Those happened to the brothers as well, though, so she didn't count them.

More than once, she had considered leaving. She knew enough about them to understand that they just didn't _do _this: adopt stray kids and teach them how to hunt. Granted, she wasn't just a stray kid, she was a stray kid with traces of angel magic who had access to knowledge even Michael didn't know, but still. At first, it was practical, because she would have been taken by demons long ago without them, but now, she would be able to survive on her own if she had to. Sam had thought that she and Castiel could team up and bust his soul out of the Cage, but she had sunk into deep meditations devoted entirely to that task and come up with nothing, and she and Cas brainstormed for weeks before either of them admitted that Noelle's presence wouldn't make a difference. Once that was established, Noelle had expected someone to drop her off at Bobby's or ask her to hit the road and begin her solo career, but no one had so much as mentioned in in passing. She knew why she _chose _to stay: it was weakness, purely and simply. Noelle was afraid of being alone. Her parents had loved them both dearly, but they were never home when Noelle and Christian were children. Even before they died, they had essentially left the job of raising her to Christian, and he had always been there to take care of her. Noelle didn't need taking care of anymore, but she had _never been alone_ and she could not muster up the courage to offer to leave, knowing she would be throwing herself headfirst into unknown territory, by herself. More than once, she had demanded of herself why ghouls and werewolves and demons scared her less than loneliness, but no answers had come up.

And Noelle liked where she was, for the most part. She had come to love Dean and Castiel, each in their own screwed-up way, and if the impression they gave her of the true Sam was correct, she had a feeling she'd eventually love him, too. And even if she didn't, she wanted to know for herself. But none of this explained why neither Dean nor Sam seemed to want her to head off on her own. Sam's logic could always be reasoned out; Noelle assumed it had something to do with the fact that she could exorcise demons with a touch (followed by a headache, a nosebleed, and a few days off from angel duty), but Dean… she doubted he loved her back. Even if he did, Dean's love for others – for Sam, for his father - was more often a weakness for him than a strength, so either way, why did he want her to stick around? She didn't know. She didn't _want _to know. She was nervous that if she dug too deep, if she thought too much about it, her fears would come to life and Sam and Dean would realize they didn't want her and send her packing.

"You with me over there?" Dean asked from the driver's seat.

"Yeah," Noelle replied quickly, "yeah, just… thinking." The question was building up in her throat, God help her, she was about to ask why she hadn't gotten the pink slip yet and set Dean wondering the same thing, but she didn't get the chance. The semi that Dean had spend most of the ride cursing out suddenly revved and screeched forward. With a shocked oath, Dean twisted the wheel hard to the right, just barely moving in time to keep it from rear-ending them.

"What the fuck?" he cried into the rearview mirror. The semi veered towards them again. "Okay, hang on, Noelle." He floored the gas and the Impala wailed, their attacker hot in pursuit.

"Is it demons?" Noelle demanded, turning around in her seat, but she could not see into the cab. "Did they find us?"

"I don't know, I don't know!"

"Well this psychopath is trying to ram us! Find an exit, we gotta get off the highway!"

"I know what we gotta do, shut up and let me drive!"

The distance between the front of the truck and the back of the car seemed to close in half. Dean went left this time and Noelle couldn't bite back the scream; nothing but a foot of road and a flimsy metal rail stood between them and the fifty-foot incline on the other side. She considered pressing her hand to Dean's forehead and trying to teleport them both out of danger, but she had never tried to zap anyone else along with her. Castiel had always hesitated to let her try it due to the danger faced both by Noelle herself and whomever she decided to experiment on. Also, Dean would kill her for leaving the Impala. A hysterical bark of laughter burst from her mouth. As long as the car was okay.

"Dean, get us out of here!" she giggled. "Before I lose my mind!"

"I'm not seeing the humor in this situation!" Dean was focused on the road. "Okay, I see an exit, hang on."

"That's not an exit, wait, wait, _wait_—!"

But he had already jerked the car hard over. They sped up the ramp, skidding up onto the grass and bursting through bushes and directly into oncoming traffic. The car suddenly felt like a ship on a stormy sea, tossed about on dense, white-capped waves, as Dean gripped the wheel and dodged the cars, whose headlights flooded Noelle's vision and made her think they had somehow already died and were being taken up to Heaven and the angels who wanted to start the Apocalypse again would have access to all the wisdom of the apple.

The car screeched in protest and horns started honking, drivers leaning out of windows and shouting. Noelle was alive.

Somehow.

"Who brings a high-speed car chase the wrong way down a one-way road?" she screamed.

"At least he didn't follow us." But a glance in the rearview mirror made Dean's expression change from grim determination to as close to panic as she had ever seen him allow himself to show. The truck had, in fact, followed them. "Call Cas!" he ordered. A pickup truck's horn rang past them.

"I can't reach his grace, I can't concentrate on it!"

"Try his cell—shit—" The car swerved.

Noelle's fingers trembled as she fumbled for her phone and hit three, thanking God or _whoever _that she had had the sense to put them all on speed dial. His clumsy voicemail message had never sounded less amusing. "Cas!" she cried into the phone. "Call me the _second _you get back, Dean and I—"

Dean whipped the car one-eighty degrees and shot up the shoulder, laughing triumphantly as they passed the semi, which was still driving the wrong way down the road. "Ha-_ha,_ you son of a bitch! This is personal, asshole, you almost wrecked my car!"

Weakly, Noelle resumed her message: "Neh—nevermind. We're okay. Cas, someone knew who we were. We almost just got wasted on the highway. Call me back."

#

"If it was an angel, they would not have bothered with the truck," Castiel said for the second time. "If it was a demon, they would have left their host and followed you. I don't think it was either, Dean."

"Well then what the hell could it have been?" he asked, standing up from the chair.

"I have a theory," said Sam. "A hunter."

Noelle rolled over onto her stomach and buried her head in her arms. "So," she said into the pillow, "angels want me. Demons want me. And hunters want me, too?"

"If you really are as valuable to the Apocalypse cause as everyone seems to think, I don't see why a hunter wouldn't try to kill you." Castiel had become accustomed to Sam's callousness, but in his voice, it still sounded wrong.

"It would solve nothing," he said. "If Noelle is killed, her soul will go to Heaven and the angels will have access to everything she knows. If my side got to her before Raphael's, this wouldn't be a problem, but—"

"Excuse me!" Noelle sat up. Her eyes looked slightly wild, though Castiel could not blame her. The car chase had happened only hours ago. "It would be a huge problem, asshole, I'd be _dead!"_

"I mean in the grand scheme," amended Castiel, annoyed that she was not seeing the bigger picture. "And I could resurrect you if one of my allies, if Camael, Muriel, Nisroc or any of those angels reached your soul first. But _only _then, so it's not a risk we should take. We have to keep you away from the hunters – if it is hunters."

"Great," she muttered. "Great. I'm being hunted. Like I'm some freak."

"I know, right?" said Sam. "Why aren't they going after the _other _kids who've eaten from the Tree of Knowledge?"

It was probably a good thing that Noelle could not kill with a glare alone. "At least I haven't been shooting up demon blood."

"Ooh, zing. Remind me to cry about that when I get my soul back."

"Okay, enough, alright?" snapped Dean. "We're all freaked. Everyone just shut up and take a breath."

"Dean is right," said Castiel. "Keeping Noelle safe from hunters will be no different from keeping her safe from everything else. Angels, demons, hunters – as long as we're vigilant, she'll be fine."

"I _will_ be fine," said Noelle. "I'm not the helpless girl who almost got killed at the laundromat. Demons? Boom, exorcised. Angels? Boom, banishing sigil. Hunters? Boom, stabbed. Or knocked out. Or I teleport the hell out of there."

"It's not that simple," said Dean, whose blood pressure looked like it had risen from _dangerous _to _lethal_. "They're gonna get smarter, Noelle. All of them. Especially the hunters, and you should stay away from them on a good day. Kill a hunter and you get blacklisted, everyone has a price on your head.

"The girl with the angel powers isn't already blacklisted?" she shot back.

"All I'm saying is that our luck so far? It ain't gonna last, sweetheart."

"Yeah, like that semi. That was our _lucky _semi."

"Hey, we came outta that without so much as a broken bone, so yeah, I count that as lucky." Dean folded his arms, glowering for a moment, then added, "Okay, who has suggestions?"

"Not me," muttered Noelle. "Apparently I don't comprehend the scope of the danger I'm in. Oh but I forgot, it's not just me, it's the whole damn world."

"The hell's gotten into you?" demanded Dean.

"Gee, I don't know!" Noelle stood up and shouldered her small purse, pulling her brother's leather jacket over it. "I think it has something to do with the fact that it would be a hell of a lot easier to just wipe the sigils off my bones and tell the angels everything I know, but I'm dealing with all this bullshit because if I don't, the human race is pushed a step closer to the edge. And what happens? I get hunted by people who want the Apocalypse to start again about as much as I do. So forgive me if I'm a little cranky."

"Okay, where do you think you're going?"

"Noelle," said Castiel, "be reasonable, you can't leave. We don't know if they're out there."

"Well, now that would be a real problem if I didn't have five months of hunter-and-angel bootcamp behind me." She pulled open the door and stalked out. Dean followed immediately, Castiel directly behind him.

"You think you're some big-time hunter now?" Dean yelled. "This ain't even the tip of the iceberg, this is like the air above it – _dammit_, Noelle!"

She had vanished, leaving only the sidewalk bathed in cold dusky light. Castiel felt rather like Dean looked: furious. Dean rounded on him. "Well?"

"What?" asked Castiel irritably.

"Aren't you gonna go grace after her?"

"I can only communicate with her through her grace. I can't use it to locate her." He closed his eyes and reached for Noelle, but did not find her. "Besides, she's shielding herself from me."

"Great. Freakin' perfect. What the hell do we do now?"

"I have a solution." Sam had also come out of their room and was now standing just outside the door, holding up the burgundy tank top Noelle had worn to bed the previous night and tossed to the floor to be washed at a later date. "We find her."

#

Though she was fuming and her hands were shaking more than usual, Noelle did not leave the town their motel was in. The sun had just finished sinking below the horizon when she opened the door to a faux-authentic Irish pub called Shamrocks and made a beeline for the bar. She had discovered over the course of the past few months that her previously nonexistant alcohol tolerance had increased dramatically, as had her metabolism; all she had eaten since that first day was takeout and diner food, and she had actually lost weight instead of gaining. It probably had something to do with the stress and the physical exertion and the fact that watching Dean eat made her kind of sick sometimes.

Noelle let her mind linger on such insignificant things as that, because if she let herself think about the big fat target on her head, her tattooed wings started to itch and her hands shook even worse. The bartender set the Corona she had ordered in front of her; Noelle thanked him clumsily around the cigarette she was trying to light.

Someone slid into the stool beside her and gently pulled the lighter from her trembling hand and lit it for her. He was a young guy, probably about her age, with a fake I.D. of his own. Tawny blond hair wisped across his face and curled softly past his ears, and bright, jewel-like green eyes smiled at her. "Rough day?" he asked kindly.

Noelle exhaled. "Thanks. Yeah. My, uh, cousins, they're driving me nuts."

"Yeah, family's awesome for that."

She nodded, but the word struck a sour chord in her. Christian was her family. She was not part of Sam and Dean's family, and they were not part of hers.

The irony of this sentiment juxtaposed against the anxiety she'd felt in the Impala mere hours ago, about being sent away, did not escape her. It just made her all the more sullen.

"So, can I buy you a drink?"

Noelle smiled in spite of everything and indicated her bottle. "I'm all set."

"Oh, check it out." The guy grinned, running four sheepish fingers through his lank hair. "So, what's your name?"

"Eve," she replied automatically. "What's yours?"

"Gregory. Nice to meet you, Eve."

She sipped her drink, hiding the smile that hadn't yet faded. "You too. Even though you're trying to hit on me."

"Am I that obvious?"

"Painfully so." She squinted. "It's like a glare off a mirror or something. Ouch."

"Maybe I could block it for you with my phone. You know, while you're giving me your number."

Open mouthed, Noelle could not hold back an appreciative laugh. "You're unbelievable."

"Is it working?" he asked with a friendly grin.

Noelle set down her beer. "I haven't decided yet."

"It's better than a flat-out rejection, I'll take it."

"I wouldn't count your chickens before they got laid, my friend."

"Who said anything about getting laid?" Gregory said. Noelle raised her eyebrows. He faltered. "Well, obviously if you _offered_ I wouldn't say no, but—hey, what's so funny?"

"You," she snickered. "Do you have absolutely no game, or is this just a bumbling-sweetheart ploy to charm your way into my pants?"

"I'd need more than charm," said Gregory. "Access to your zipper, for starters."

Noelle was sold. The brothers (Sam more so than Dean) both had their fair share of meaningless hookups, and she was not in the mood to do the responsible thing. "Not in a crowded bar, Gregory," she replied coyly.

"Lucky for us, my car's right in the parking lot."

"Oh yeah? What kind? I'm a sucker for boys with good gas mileage."

"Maybe we should rethink this, then. My wheels eat that shit up."

Noelle finished her beer. "Aw, and you were so close."

"Hey, I recycle!" Gregory slid a few bills onto the bar. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Not as much as the fact that you just weaseled your way into buying my drink." She smirked at him and stood up; he followed. "So where's your gas-guzzling deathmobile?"

"Right this way, madam." His arm slid around her shoulders and she put hers around his waist as they left the bar, drunk more on the in-progress bad decision than the one measly beer. Dean was going to kill her. It felt good.

_Who's a goddamn angel? _she challenged herself as Gregory opened the back door of his Jeep and she slid inside, back against the window. _I'm not an angel. I'm a human._ It was human desire that made her slide off her jacket and pocketbook and wrap her arms around Gregory's neck, kissing him hard and loving the aftertaste of the joint he had been smoking not ten minutes before entering the bar. His long hand cupped her breast without an invitation; she nibbled his tongue and ran her fingers through his hair in response, reveling in the coarseness, the intrusion. He pulled her shirt off and bit her neck, fingers slipping under her black bra. Breathless, Noelle arched her back.

"Nice tat," he whispered against her skin. "You a Wiccan?"

"Superstitious," she said, eyes closed. "It's for protection."

"Protection against what?"

"Mmh…" His tongue stroked the pentagram inked on her breast. "Against sly guys who come onto you in bars."

"Maybe you need to get it touched up." Noelle laughed softly into his mouth as it covered hers again. Gregory sat up, his knees on either side of her hips. She could see his arousal distorting the crotch of his jeans as he reached into his pocket. "Please tell me you're a partying kind of girl, because I got this new shit from my dealer and baby, you gotta try it."

"Mm, I don't know…" There was a difference, Noelle reminded herself, between being irresponsible and being downright stupid. "What is it?"

He opened his palm. On it rested a small vial full of dark liquid, and even in the dim light of the parking lot, Noelle could see that it was red. Shit_._ "The best stuff on the planet."

Shit. Shit. Shit. _Shit!_

"Ooh, you know what? I just remembered, I have to…" She racked her brains. Of all things, she had stumbled upon a vampire and now she was shirtless and, worse, machete-less. But she would never get another opportunity like this. He stared at her expectantly. Trying to pass it off as nothing, Noelle smiled and trailed her fingers down the buttons of his flannel shirt. "I don't try new drugs with guys I've just met."

"I'll take some first if that's what you're worried about."

"No dice, Gregory, I'm sorry."

"Aw, don't be like that…" He sucked the lobe of her ear, teeth working her skin, and Noelle realized just how much danger she was in. When it became clear she wasn't going to drink the blood, all Gregory had to do was bite his own tongue or something and then break her skin under the disguise of getting a little carried away, and that would be the end.

"How about this," she breathed, gasping a little as he pressed his hips flush against hers, suddenly wishing she weren't so turned on. It would make the task of getting her bearings so much easier. "Why don't you take me home and we can make a real night of this?"

"Parents are home," he said in her ear. "I don't think this would fly with them."

"Then I should probably go."

"What's wrong?" Gregory asked, voice hardening.

"I'm having second thoughts, I'm… I'm a virgin." Noelle made a mental note to kick herself for picking the worst lie on the planet to tell him.

He didn't buy it. "Eve, you're not a virgin."

"I'm having second thoughts, Gregory, get off me."

"Babe, come on—"

"Get _off _me."

"Eve—"

"Dammit, Gregory, get off!" She grabbed at her ankle where she'd strapped her knife and held it up between them, remembering a little too late that she might as well be holding up a twig for all the good it would do her.

Gregory glanced down at it, unimpressed. "Yeah, I've seen that symbol on your chest before, that's no superstitious mumbo jumbo, it's the real deal. Figures the prettiest girl in Shamrocks would be a hunter."

"Figures the guy I decide to hook up with is a vampire," she retorted. "Though you were far from the best-looking guy in there."

"Well, that's just adorable." He seized her wrist and with a sharp jerk, snapped it. Noelle screamed at the sudden fracture, the hot jolt that ran up her entire arm.

_"Fuck! _You bastard!"

Gregory slid the flat of her own knife down her face, eyes on her hitching chest. "You know, my nest would just love the chance to housebreak a hunter."

"Yeah, and my friends would just love to rip your heads off if you so much as touch me."

"Isn't it a little late for that?" With a cruel laugh, startlingly different from his amicable mirth earlier, he squeezed her broken wrist and her bones grated together, splintering inside her flesh. The agony made her clench her eyes shut, trying not to scream again, and her pain-fogged brain barely registered the sensation of Gregory reaching under her back with his other hand and unhooking her bra, peeling it off her.

"You sonofabitch, I'm carving your _name _into my machete – _aaagh!"_

Her ruined wrist exploded again.

"Good luck getting to it in time," he laughed. "You are so screwed, Eve." Gregory attacked her mouth, his second set of teeth extending. With a nearly spastic flail of her undamaged arm, she clasped the blade of the knife, ignoring the twin slices it left in her palm, and teleported back to the motel room mid-groan. Hazily deciding that she didn't need the boys seeing her half-naked, she rolled onto her stomach, the rough fibers of the carpet digging into her cut hand, her splintered wrist screaming in protest.

"Noelle!" cried Dean roughly. A chair scraped, knees thudded to the carpet beside her, and he pressed his hand to her bare back. "What the fuck happened to you? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she gasped out. "My wrist—Cas—Cas, could you—?"

He was already there, laying his hand over the break. She choked at the crunch of her bones snapping back together and then the haze cleared as the pain faded. Dean was covering her naked back with his jacket. Castiel took her cut hand, the knife falling to the carpet, and healed that, too. Shakily, Noelle sat up, holding Dean's jacket against her chest. All three men – Dean and Castiel on either side of her and Sam at the table with a pendulum set up before him – were staring at her as if they expected her to drop dead on the spot. She coughed awkwardly.

"Does… does someone want to grab me a shirt?"

"Of course," said Castiel immediately, standing up. Dean held her shoulder, looking at her, his eyes managing at once to look concerned and absolutely murderous.

"Are you all right?" he repeated.

"I'm okay."

"What the hell happened, who did this to you?"

"A vampire," she confessed. "It… I was… already half-dressed when I realized. He pulled the drug trick on me. Thanks, Cas," she added, as Castiel handed her her purple V-neck. She turned away from them and pulled it over her head, running her fingers through her short, untidy black hair to fix it.

"So… did you find the nest?"

"Sam!"

"Dean, it's fine," Noelle snapped. "No, I didn't. I was trying to get him to take me there, but he wasn't having it, so I went to leave and he wouldn't let me, I pulled the knife on him, and he broke my wrist."

"Did he turn you?"

"No, dude, don't you think I would have mentioned that by now?" She turned to Dean, away from Sam. "I would have offed him, but I didn't bring the machete. Wasn't really expecting to need it."

"Yeah, well, they're awkward to carry anyway," said Dean with a weak smile. "Look, we'll get the bastard and his nest. We're just glad you're all right."

Noelle smiled back, surprised and pleased and touched. "Thank you," she said, taking her knife from the carpet. It was small and silver and smeared with her blood. She wiped it off on her jeans and her hand automatically touched at her hip, looking for her purse and her cigarettes, but she had left everything in Gregory's car. An icy wave broke over her neck – that included Christian's jacket.

She had saved Dean's knife, but left Christian's jacket.

* * *

_Yeah, Noelle was kind of a skank here, but come on… spending five months basically with living three incredibly attractive men, with all of whom you have a purely platonic relationship, and not getting laid at all? All with a sugary coating of abandonment issues? I'd be sexually frustrated too._


	8. Holy Oil

**Chapter Eight**

**Holy Oil**

Noelle had offered to go back to Shamrocks the next evening with Sam and Dean, but Dean had told her to lay low with Castiel until they found the vampires' nest, citing the fact that one of them already had her scent. Castiel knew the real reason: Dean did not trust Sam with Noelle after Sam had let him get turned the last time they had dealt with vampires. Noelle and Castiel were waiting in the motel instead for the brothers to return. The plan was for the Winchesters to tail a vampire back to its nest, and then come back and wait until morning to storm it.

Castiel's relief the previous night when he had confirmed that Noelle was, in fact, completely okay, was startling – as was the wrath still swimming in his mind, directed at her attacker. He could no longer deny the fact that his allegiance was almost evenly divided between his Home and his friends, but the outrage at the sight of her clutching Dean's jacket to her chest because of an attack of that nature had sparked a degree of anger Castiel had rarely felt. It fell below the level of anger at Raphael and his followers, below the anger he had felt when Dean had tried to say yes to Michael and he himself had barely gotten there in time to stop him (and throw a few punches), but Castiel had never been _this _angry about something so very personal when it really didn't affect him. For the first time, he felt guilty that he had not been there to protect her.

When he tried to explain this to her, Noelle had snarled that everything that had happened, had happened because she'd allowed it to and the only reason she had waited so long before getting away from the vampire was because she was trying to find out where his nest was, and if Castiel didn't shut the hell up and leave her alone, she was going to cut open her arm and banish him. The relief did not dissipate, however. And it was only half because Noelle's death would absolutely screw them.

"What were you guys doing, anyway?" she asked, indicating the makeshift pendulum set up on the table over a printed map of the town. Beside it lay her dark tank top.

"Sam was working a spell to try and find you," Castiel replied. The sun had been up for several hours now, and Noelle had not slept once.

"He went through my dirty laundry while I was out, that's not creepy. So the spell took the entire time I was gone?"

He did not argue; it actually was creepy, now that she mentioned it. "The pendulum kept going haywire. I think it had to do with the sigils."

Noelle nodded, cutting the price tag off her black motorcycle jacket. She kept glaring at it, as if it were the reason for the loss of her brother's jacket, but Castiel thought the new one suited her better. Rather than misshapenly bagging off her, the black one clung snugly to her torso, making her appear less like a little girl draped in her big brother's coat and more like the capable hunter she was. She had also purchased a new purse, this one in the shape of a small pouch that fastened to her belt in two places and rested on her hip. With a sigh, she lay the jacket beside her on the bed.

"What are the odds that of all the bars in town, I go to the one with a vampire in it, and of all the girls in that bar to try to turn, he chooses me?"

"It is strange," agreed Castiel. "But stranger things have happened."

"I guess… what if there are other hunters here, trying to get the nest? And they stumble across us?"

Castiel looked over at her set jaw and at her hands, which were gripping her knees to stop them from shaking. "Are you afraid?"

Noelle snorted. "No."

Lie. He did not push it. "Your hands, have they always been like that? So unsteady?"

"No, this nonsense was recent. It started a few weeks after I started tagging along with you guys."

"Huh…"

"I just assumed it was my body reacting to my powers?" she said uncertainly. "You know, it strengthens me in some ways, by letting me run longer and fight better and teleport, but it weakens me in others, with my hands and my insomnia. I've meditated on angel mojo more than about anything else. It's dangerous."

"You're right. It is."

"You're so cheery, Cas." Noelle shook her head. "Is this permanent? Am I looking at bloodshot eyes and shaky hands for the rest of my life?"

"It is possibly," replied Castiel. "I am hoping your body will either adjust or sublime."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning, change in composition, to better contain your grace."

"What, change into stardust or something? You're nuts." Her cell phone rang. "It's Dean – hey, Dean. Did you find it? Sweet. Where are you? Yeah, I got a pen. Okay… okay, great. Yeah. Okay, I'll be there in a sec. No, Cas is angeling up to Heaven for the night, he hasn't been all day. Yeah. Okay. Be there soon. Yup. Obviously I'm going to bring it, dude, I'm not walking in there naked. Okay. Bye." Noelle shut her phone and tucked it into her belt pouch. "Okay, Cas, away I go. Have fun up in Heaven."

"Don't mock me," he muttered. Noelle grinned.

"I would never. See you later." She took the handle of her machete and vanished. Castiel took a brief moment to pray for her; if she kept refusing to talk seriously about her traumas, something was going to go wrong, and soon. He shook his head and departed for Heaven.

#

Sam and Dean were outside an old ramshackle house when Noelle met up with them. The chain-link fence was rusted and bent in places; the house itself seemed like it had been abandoned for years, with its overgrown weed-choked lawn and crumbling porch flanked by worn, age-delicate rails. Noelle wondered if the vampires had rented it or were just squatting, but it only took a few moments of quiet speculation before she decided she did not care.

"What's the plan?" she asked the boys.

"We're gonna go in swinging," said Sam. "Here, take this—" He pressed a syringe into her palm.

"Dead man's blood?"

"You know it. We have a few bottles of it, so dip your machete before we go in. Go for the one who knows you first, because your scent might wake him up. We poison one or two and take them to Crowley. Once we've secured them, you ride in the back with them, make sure they stay sedated."

Noelle glanced at Dean for confirmation. He nodded once. Reassured, she took the plastic bottle of thick dark blood and slathered it over the blade of her machete. "Wish Cas were here," she said, half to herself.

"Nah," said Dean. "Dude's up there trying to fix Heaven, the last thing he needs is to become one of Crowley's Angels."

"Still…"

"Yeah, I miss him too," interrupted Sam shortly. "Are we ready or what?"

"Yeah," grumbled Dean, "let's dance." He jumped over the gate, offering his hand to Noelle as Sam followed suit, but she only glared at him, pointedly teleporting herself from one side of the fence to the other. He huffed at her, leading the way up the path. The door creaked as he opened it, but the vampire didn't wake. They slept in motley clusters all across the antique-looking living room; there was a pile of four or five lumped together on the bed someone had dragged to the center in place of a coffee table, several more scattered across couches, one couple snuggling on the floor. It looked almost cute until she remembered Gregory's wish for his nest to "housebreak a hunter" and shuddered. Dean signaled Sam to check upstairs, and tugged Noelle over to him.

"Any of these they guy from last night?"

Noelle scanned the sleeping vampires. "No."

"All right, maybe he's—"

But suddenly, a brilliant flash of light blinded her and made her brains fry inside her skull. She clamped her hands to her temples, screaming against the pain. Vaguely, off to her left, Noelle could sense struggling; the vampires were up and three or four of them were wrestling Dean's machete away from him. Noelle reached sluggishly for the syringe in her pocket, but a long-fingered hand grabbed a handful of her bangs and jerked her a few stumbling steps forward.

"Well hi there, Eve," said Gregory with a huge, false grin.

"Nuh," she mumbled incoherently. She curled her fingers around the syringe.

"Leave her alone!" shouted Dean from off to the side. Two severed heads lay at his feet, but three vampires still held him in place, his machete tossed aside. Another vampire lay on the floor, moaning and holding fast to a wound in his arm; Dean must have cut her with his blood-drizzled blade.

"Shut up," said Gregory. "So, _Noelle,_ we got off to a bad—_aaargh!"_

She had stabbed him in the neck with the syringe and hit the plunger. "Run, run!" Dean yelled at her. She turned instead to the vampires holding him and swiped, but she had barely nicked the one with the beard when the redhead kicked at her legs and knocked them out from under her.

"You do NOT want me to go Vlad the Impaler on your ass!" she screamed from the floor, scrambling away from him.

"Who's afraid of the big bad angel?" he retorted. Noelle's blood ran cold. "That's right, honey buns, Greg told us everything."

_How had Gregory found out? _The teleportation alone? Surely one did not see someone else teleport and immediately think, _oh, she must be part-angel. _She jumped to her feet. Dean was struggling against the two vampires still holding him, the redhead was advancing on her, and where the fuck was Sam? Her head still throbbed from the sigil, but something was wrong about that. It had to be painted in human blood. Vampire blood shouldn't work.

Before Noelle could either clear her head or take another swipe at her agressor, she sensed someone behind her an instant too late. An arm slammed around her torso, pinning her own arms to her sides, and the man pressed a damp rag to her nose and mouth. Noelle lurched violently, trying to get free, but he was stronger than her. The chemical smell smogged up her brain, making her vision swim. She tried to teleport away, over to Dean, who was roaring, "YOU FUCKING TRAITOR, LET HER GO!" but to her horror, she couldn't. The inked wings on her back itched, like they wanted to spring free of her back, and she had a faint impression that she was bleeding into the rag before the sight of Dean still held fast by a pair of vampires drowned in black and she sank into unconsciousness.

#

Something was burning. Noelle could hear the crackle of flames, feel the heat seeping from alarmingly close to her. Orange, unsteady light danced into her closed eyes. She stood too quickly, balance swaying, and pressed a hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes to keep the dizziness from flinging her back to the floor. Something was burning.

"Welcome back," said a voice in front of her.

Noelle lowered her hand. She was standing in a ring of fire, outside which stood a bald man in flannel. He was older, past fifty for sure, leaning on a long rifle.

"Who are you?" she demanded, seizing the panic bubbling up inside her and forcing it to the bottom of her mind.

"I heard you were smart, Noelle. Give it a second, it'll come to you."

She grit her teeth, suspicions confirmed. Dean had called him a traitor. "Samuel."

"Bingo."

"But why?" she asked helplessly. "I'm liv—I'm working with your grandsons. Why do this? I—I can't be captured, it's bad news for everyone, Samuel—and you left Sam and Dean for dead out there!"

"I may not be the milk and cookies type of granddad, but I'm not evil," he said, bushy gray eyebrows bristling. "They boys'll be fine. How do you think we got in? Gregory over there's been in our pocket for a few days now."

Noelle looked over to the corner of the room, where Samuel was pointing with his rifle. Gregory lay in a heap against the wall, as if someone had carried him in and just let him slide to the floor. His arms were shackled behind his back, and someone had driven a needle into his arm. An IV dripped blood into his veins. Dead man's blood, for sure. "The whole 'signs of vampire activity' thing, you were just luring us to the town?"

"You _are _smart."

"So Sam and Dean are…"

"We grabbed you and Gregory and skedaddled. The boys probably finished off the nest about five minutes after we left."

"No," moaned Gregory from the corner. "Samuel… you promised…"

Horror sank into Noelle's gut. "Let me guess—he told you he'd tell other hunters to leave your nest alone if you gave him me. You knew who I was when you came onto me in Shamrocks."

"Sorry," he whispered, "so sorry… my nest, my nest…"

Amazingly, Noelle's resolve softened. She rounded on Samuel. "I'll have you know that this guy broke my wrist, tried to turn me, and would have done a couple other things if I hadn't flown the fuck outta there, and _you're _the one I'm mad at right now."

"My heart breaks," replied Samuel.

"So why'd you do this? Gregory may be your bitch, but last I checked, you were Crowley's bitch, and if he wanted me, he'd've had me a long time ago."

"Oh, this isn't for Crowley," said Samuel. "He wants to keep the Apocalypse from happening, and you're really the Olympic Runner for Armegeddon. As long as Sam and Dean are around to babysit you, Crowley doesn't care what you do."

"Why, then?" demanded Noelle, sick by now of asking the same question fifteen times. "I don't think Big Man's going to be happy with you if he was fine letting me do my own thing before."

"No," replied Samuel, "but there's a certain archangel who would give his wings to interview you."

Noelle's heart sank. "No. Samuel, no. The apple's wisdom is fussy, it only comes to me sometimes – to access it on purpose, I have to meditate for hours. And if I _can _call it up, they're going to use it to let Lucifer out of his Cage! They're going to use me to end the world if you do this."

"They're also going to give me my daughter back," replied Samuel levelly.

"You think Mary would want you to bring her back at this cost?" cried Noelle. Samuel stepped just outside the flames, staring her down.

"Don't you dare presume to know anything about my daughter. Who are you? You think just because those boys are taking care of you, that gives you the right to talk as if you're family? Well, I got news for you, little girl. Those boys ain't my family, and you ain't theirs."

"I know," replied Noelle softly, meeting his livid eyes. "I know I don't know anything about Mary. But I know enough about hunters to know none of them would want to be saved if it meant the Devil walked free. Not you, not me—"

"Oh, you are just _funny,"_ said Samuel. "A couple of months tagging along with Sam and Dean and you're a hunter now? You don't know anything about it. You haven't lost anything to this life."

"My brother was murdered by demons in front of me," snarled Noelle. "A demon tricked me into eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and now I have fucking angel powers and a database of Holy Wisdom or what the fuck ever in my head, only I can't always access it. I left my friends unaware, I left my brother unburied, I left behind everything I had to keep the Apocalypse from starting again. I killed an innocent boy who had no idea he was a werewolf. I watched the light vanish from the eyes of a woman I didn't get to in time. Dean and I were almost rammed by a s—holy shit, _you _were driving that semi, weren't you?"

"Gwen was," corrected Samuel. "It doesn't matter. You think the past few months have been hard? I almost wish I could let you go, just so you could learn how much worse it gets."

"I think you're going to get that wish," bluffed Noelle. "I take it you knew the banishing sigil wouldn't work on me, or you wouldn't have used it. You just wanted to fuck me up for a few seconds. So what makes you think holy fire will keep me here?"

"Call it a hunch. An educated guess. That rag I used to knock you out? Three parts chloroform, one part holy oil. But hey, if you think you can cross it without getting smoked…" With a smirk that made Noelle want to claw his eyes out, Samuel stepped back. "Be my guest."

She didn't move, thoughts crashing through her head. The banishing sigil only affected the very small part of her that was fully angelic. What would holy fire do? Burn out her grace? Well, good riddance. Although Samuel might kill her then… But what if it didn't? What if the reaction of her grace to the holy fire did kill her? It wasn't worth the risk. If she died, unless by some miracle one of Castiel's angels got to her first, she belonged to Raphael. Noelle remained where she was.

Samuel kept smirking. "That's what I thought."

"Go to hell."

"That was the original plan. But I like this one better."

"You're condemning the world, Samuel. Innocent people are going to die. Thousands, millions of them! How is Mary going to look you in the eye? How is she going to call you her father?"

He looked as if he would like nothing better than to step inside the circle and smack her. It gave her some satisfaction to see him so worked up. Perhaps a bit too much. "Just sit tight, little girl. I have a summoning ritual to conduct."

Noelle let the panic burst through the floodgates of her mind. "Samuel, don't do this, please! Samuel, please, please, you have to let me go! Samuel! SAMUEL!"

He slammed the door shut.

Noelle turned to Gregory's prone form. "Can you move?" she demanded harshly.

"I can barely see," he mumbled. She couldn't argue; there was probably enough dead man's blood in him for two vampires. "Eve… Noelle… I'm so sorry. He said they'd protect my nest—"

"Save it," she snapped, sitting cross-legged in the center of the ring and pulling her cigarettes out of her belt pouch. "I'm not interested. Even if he had kept his promise—" she used the holy fire to light a cigarette and replaced the case in her pouch "—you still tried to _turn _me. Sam and Dean and I would have killed you all anyway."

Gregory said nothing for a few moments. "What would you have done?" His voice was weak, like it took all of his strength just to draw enough breath for words. "If someone came up to you and said you, Sam, and Dean would be protected from everything hunting you and all you had to do was lure me to your place?"

"I wouldn't believe them," she replied, exhaling. "I wouldn't, Gregory. I'm shocked you did."

"He said if I didn't, they'd kill us themselves."

"Now that, I'd believe."

"Noelle… I wasn't trying to turn you. I was just supposed to make you realize I was a vampire and let you escape. They knew you'd track me to my nest."

"So you broke my wrist for kicks, asshole?"

He didn't reply to that. "If I'd known what was at stake…"

"You mean the _whole fucking world?_ I didn't realize you gave a shit."

"I don't want the Apocalypse to happen. I don't."

Noelle surveyed her cigarette rather than looking at him. "Okay, you want to help? I need you to pray to an angel named Castiel. Tell him Noelle's in trouble. Big trouble. Apocalypse trouble. I dunno if they can hear your kind praying, but it's worth a shot."

"Castiel," murmured Gregory. "Angel of Thursday. I've prayed to him my whole life."

That made Noelle pause. "Really?"

"I was born on a Thursday. And turned, now that I think about it…" From his place across the room, Gregory attempted to smile. "I was a pretty pious Christian, pre-vamp. I still am… I just don't know if the Lord listens anymore."

"The Lord definitely doesn't, the dick" said Noelle bitterly. "But Cas might. Give it a shot. But quietly. I need to concentrate."

"Cas," repeated Gregory, sounding almost reverent. "You know Castiel personally?"

"I said can it."

He acquiesced, falling silent, and Noelle crushed out her cigarette and shut her eyes, searching with her grace for Castiel's. If he was on Earth, she would be able to reach it, but if not, she could only pray and hope he heard her. His grace escaped her, but something else caught at hers. Dean sat beside her in the ring of holy fire—no, not Dean physically, it just felt like Dean. Shocked, she opened herself.

_…if you can even hear me. Sam thinks I'm a moron for trying it, but what else is new… Noelle, seriously, get your little tattooed ass back here…_

_ Dean,_ she replied. She felt him recoil slightly. _Dean?_

_ Turn down the volume a little, you sound like microphone feedback._

She lowered her mental voice to a whisper. _Were you just praying to me?_

_ Yeah. Thank god it worked, cus Cas isn't answering the phone. We think something's wrong. Are you okay?_

Noelle's heart sank. _Oh god. They're holding him against his will up there, I know it. So he can't come back and help. Dean, Samuel won't let me go. He's going to turn me over to Raphael._

_ That son of a bitch._ Connected as they were, Dean's anger exploded within her, as did his conviction that Samuel would die, that he would do it himself. _Listen to me. Cas could still work his telekinetic mojo even when he was stuck in holy fire. Is that how Samuel's tied you up?_

_ Yeah._

_ Okay. Look around you. Is there anything, a pipe, an emergency sprinkler, anything you can use to put the fire out?_

Noelle tightened her grace around her sense of Dean so she would not lose him when her concentration broke, and opened her eyes. The room looked like the attic of an old house; the skeleton of the rafters yawned overhead and patches of wood had been torn away, showing the pink insulation beneath, but she could see none of the plumbing and there were no sprinklers. _No, there's nothing._

_ Do you know where you are?_

_ No. I got chloroform'd and when I woke up, I was already trapped here._

_ Dammit… I'm gonna talk to Sam. Hang in there. We will _not _let Raphael get you._

_ Dean, you have to hurry. Samuel's summoning him right now. I don't know how much time you have._

_ Sit tight. Don't be afraid. We're coming for you._

The sense of Dean's presence slipped away. Noelle gasped, eyes snapping open.

"Did you get him?" she demanded of Gregory.

"No," he said. "I—was he going to literally respond to me?"

"Fuck. Fuck, he's trapped in Heaven. He can't get down. We're so fucking screwed." Noelle buried her face in her hands, trying to think. Gregory did not speak, but the sounds of him shifting grated on her flayed nerves. His shackles clinked and the IV creaked on its old wheels. It really was cruel to keep dripping dead man's blood into the guy; he was already sufficiently dosed up. That bag would be better spent putting out the holy fire.

Noelle almost smacked herself. _Duh._

"Gregory," she said. "Listen carefully. If I can unlock the chains and get the needle out of you, can you grab the bag and get over to me? If you use the blood to put the fire out, make just enough room for me to get through without touching it, I can get out. I can get us both out of here."

"I don't know," he said. "Try it. I'll crawl if I have to."

Noelle nodded and closed her eyes again, looking at the room beyond vision. Her grace stretched over to Gregory and reached into the shackles, unlocking the tumblers, and then focused in on the needle in his elbow. Gingerly, she let her grace share space with his flesh to push the needle out from the inside. He gasped in pain, but it lasted less than five seconds, making Noelle wonder just what Sam and that one unfortunate kid Dean had told her about had felt when Castiel essentially reached his entire arm into them.

"Can you do it?"

"Give me… give me a second…" Gregory took a deep (and unnecessary) breath and lurched forward on his belly, using his elbows to crawl forward, army-style, but in slow motion. Every few seconds, he had to stop and rest his forehead on the floor, and Noelle couldn't help but feel guilty. She had a feeling that even if he did manage to reach her and give her the bag, he wouldn't be able to do much else, and what would she do, then? She couldn't carry him out, but she couldn't leave him with Samuel, could she? Although, the headache from the sigil was wearing off, which meant her powers were recovering from their temporarily weakened state. Had there ever been a better time to try and teleport with someone else? Especially when they were so pressed for time and Gregory, through no fault of his own, was taking up so much of it… in fact, why _did _they have so much time?

"Something's wrong," Noelle realized aloud.

"Look - have someone shoot molten lead into your veins and see how fast you are, okay…?"

"No, no, not that, it's… where the hell's Raphael?"

Gregory glanced up at her, his slightly unfocused, dilated eyes looking more confused than before. "Shouldn't we file that under 'who the fuck cares as long as it's not here'?"

"No, I…"

But a burst of unfamiliar grace settled in the corner of the room behind Gregory along with the same flapping noise that accompanied Cas whenever he folded space with his wings. Noelle leaped backwards, remembering at the last millisecond that if she fell too far back, she'd blunder out of the holy oil and get sent either up to Heaven, where Raphael could get her, or down to Hell, where there were tons of demons who would just love to get to know her. She lurched back to a somewhat-balanced position, to the sound of the new angel laughing.

"Wow, you're spastic. Although who can blame you, right? Hanging out with the _Winchesters? _Man, you got some guts, kiddo."

"Get the fuck away from me," snarled Noelle, though Raphael was… shorter than she'd expected. And less imposing. And much more jolly.

The brown-haired angel smirked. "Relax, Snow White, you're expecting my big brother Raph. My name is Gabriel."

_I had to bring Gabe back. I had to. And Eric Kripke said it was possible he _could _come back, so I don't feel like I'm assaulting the canon. He is the Trickster after all, and I freaking love him._


	9. Give 'Em Hell, Kid

_Author's notes: This was oodles of fun to write, and I didn't just pull these guys out of my ass, I did research! I felt like Sam. Zerachiel and Ithuriel, according to lore, are the two angel-helpers of Michael. Also, according to lore, Camael is sort of a badass and actually led the torches-and-pitchforks brigade that drove Adam and Eve out of Eden (ironic), but I changed him up because he's so much sweeter and likable this way and… I like making Cas miserable, I guess._

…

_Sorry, Cas._

As soon as Castiel returned to Heaven when Noelle hung up the phone with Dean and went to join the boys at the vampires' nest, he knew something was wrong. Usually, Camael sought him out as soon as he reached Heaven, but of all angels, Zerachiel and Ithuriel had beaten him there.

Castiel's wings twitched as he felt their grace approach from behind. Individually, the two were dangerous, but together, they felt, well… like Michael. And given that their entire lives, they had essentially served him the way an angel is only meant to serve God, Castiel was not surprised. He had managed to avoid direct conflicts with them since his return to Heaven after Lucifer's defeat, for which he had felt immense gratitude, though to whom, he did not know. Zerachiel and Ithuriel would most certainly have sided with Raphael, putting his own dwindling force of peacekeepers at an even further disadvantage.

He would never tell Sam, he would never tell Noelle, and he would _never_ tell Dean, but Castiel was by now almost completely convinced that Sam's ultimate sacrifice had been for nothing. That their whole plan to return Lucifer to his Cage had only succeeded in losing Sam's soul, losing Adam Milligan, royally pissing off the two most powerful archangels in the universe, and buying them a little more than a year to get used to the idea that the world was going to end anyway.

Castiel fought the urge to heave a sigh, wishing he had taken the extra time to leave Jimmy's body in the Doldrums, as most angels did when they were using vessels, but since he had only expected to confer with Camael today, he had not seen the need. Now, confronted by two angels he was sure were very powerful enemies, he was at a severe disadvantage; both of them were in their true forms, and he was wearing this tiny (but valiant) human body. Castiel would have stood a chance in combat had they taken vessels as well, but in Heaven, an angel in his true form could hardly consider an occupied vessel a threat. Not leaving Jimmy – not yet, anyway - he simply folded his wings respectfully as Zerachiel and Ithuriel landed behind him, just beyond the Pearly Gates, where the Road started.

"Brothers," he said by way of greeting, turning around. They had done him the small courtesy of diminishing their sizes so each only had about a foot or so on him, though Castiel knew it had been done for convenience's sake; when you're the size of a skyscraper, having a conversation with someone human-sized is just annoying.

"Castiel," said Zerachiel coldly. Michael's disciples had only _just _outranked him, back in the days where rank meant something, and even that was due solely to the fact that they were Michael's… "sidekicks" would be an appropriate word.

"I must say I am surprised you haven't sought me out before this," he said, turning now to face them. "I assumed you would be angry."

"As we have it, all _you_ succeeded in doing last year was making yourself completely human," said Zerachiel. Castiel considered his own true form. Zerachiel was taller than him, his halo brighter as it threw a harsh pool of light about him, his wings more ragged and fierce. Ithuriel was smaller, more subdued, though his feathers were as razor-sharp as his words, few though they were. They made an interesting team. Castiel could remember his early days as a watcher, when they tried to recruit him to make their duo a trio, all because they were the only three angels of lower rank who had met and were close to any of the archangels. They had greatly intimidated him then; he was little more than a child then, and Gabriel had taken him under his wing quite suddenly. He had not met Michael at all. Zerachiel's considerable pride had suffered greatly when their underling Castiel turned them down. "And then dying without being able to even defend yourself, like some orphaned child. You always were a strange thing, Castiel."

"You did not come to me to reminisce about the past," said Castiel.

"The girl," said Ithuriel. A cold prickle settled in his stomach and Castiel wished he had left Jimmy upon entering Heaven.

"Now, now, Ithuriel," interrupted Zerachiel patronizingly, "don't be rude. "We haven't seen our little brother in years, can't we have a nice chat before _tearing the wings from his back?_"

"The girl, Zerachiel," disagreed the younger angel. "We have no time."

"Hmmm… he's right, you know," said Zerachiel, turning his eyes to Castiel, who immediately offered a reflexive prayer to his deaf Father that Noelle and the boys not do anything stupid before he was able to return. Although knowing his human family, that was asking quite a lot.

Castiel stiffened inwardly. Usually quite disciplined in his thoughts when he thought about them, Castiel had never before allowed himself to think of them as his family. His brothers and sisters and his Father were supposed to be his family, not the young girl who hid her emotions even from herself and had eaten the Fruit, not the tall boy who was not evil but continually and unwittingly did evil things, and certainly not the rugged hunter who drank too much and swore too much and treated Castiel like a friend and not an angel. And yet they were the only family he wanted anymore. "There are a great many girls on Earth," quipped Castiel. "Somewhere around three billion, I believe. I couldn't possibly be expected to know the one you mean."

"You speak like a human." Zerachiel's tone was scathing. "Your grace reeks of them. I cannot believe that you had a third of our brothers and sisters following you willingly, Castiel. It absolutely blows my mind."

"I never thought it would take much to blow _your _mind, Zerachiel."

"The girl," repeated Ithuriel. "The girl who ate of the Fruit. You've hidden her from us and we want her."

This was going to become a fight, he just knew it. He was stronger than he had ever been, but he was far from the greatest threat Heaven had to offer even with Michael stuck in Lucifer's Cage, and both Zerachiel and Ithuriel out-brawned him – not to mention outnumbered him at the moment. _Where was Camael?_ Usually he arrived within seconds of Castiel, with a report on how things were going, who had died, who had switched sides, who had vanished, who was trying to kill him. The good-natured angel knew just as well as Castiel himself that they didn't really stand a chance anymore, but pretended ignorance, probably for his sake. Sweet Camael, who had received Castiel's position as a watcher when he himself had proved unable to do the job – it was just as well, for Castiel had adjusted to the duties of an avenger and he was not sure that Camael would have been able to. He hoped his brother was all right.

"I hope for your sakes that you haven't intercepted Camael," he said, ignoring Ithuriel.

"That little glorified cherub?" Zerachiel's wings brushed one another dismissively. "He's all right, if that's the question you're dancing around. We won't so much as pluck one of his feathers if you give us the girl."

Castiel fought the conscience that had bubbled back to the surface and refused to leave the moment Dean Winchester had prayed to him when the brothers stumbled across the Staff of Moses. "A hostage, Zerachiel? When our entire cause depends on keeping Noelle away from you? You must know that Camael would sooner die. He's shown that countless times."

"Yes, and for an angel who's spent his whole life staring at humans without so much as trying to learn to fight, he has quite a way with that blade. But we overpowered him in record time. He's in Prison now if you'd like to have a chat with him."

Castiel quite nearly felt like swearing, though he still hadn't quite been able to do so while he was in Heaven. Raphael's side had seized the Prison early the previous year, only adding to their already considerable advantage. He remembered the torture that had been inflicted upon him almost three years ago and shuddered; Camael would not be able to withstand it, and since he was not the one who had the information they sought, he would not be able to stop them, either. Yet Castiel couldn't give them Noelle, purely for strategic reasons. Yes, he was fond of her (overly so, he felt, but he could not help it), and yes, he considered Dean his "best friend" to the extent of his understanding of the phrase and Dean would be _pissed off _if he did (and the idea of Dean being angry with him caused him so much more distress than it should have), but the stone cold, undeniable fact was that Noelle, in the wrong hands, would go from a small asset to a deadly weapon. She would have been much more useful to their cause while Lucifer still walked free, but Castiel knew that whatever was cached away in that head of hers didn't extend much beyond putting the Devil back in Hell. He doubted she could stop this war their way. But if Raphael, if Zerachiel and Ithuriel got their hands on her, she could stop _this_ war and re-start the one they had sacrificed so much to halt in its tracks.

And once they had forcibly extracted every scrap of knowledge the Fruit had communicated to her, Castiel knew that they would kill her.

"Camael knows nothing about the girl," he said. "I didn't tell anyone where she is, for precisely this reason. There are no orders anymore, Zerachiel, no immediate superiors to obey, so I know that isn't your reason. Since when do we torture our brothers for the pleasure of it?"

"These orders come from Raphael."

"I should have known." There was nothing to be done. He offered a small prayer to Camael, a simple one: _Brother, I am sorry,_ and spread his wings to return to Earth. He had no intentions of abandoning one of the only angels he still trusted, but nothing could be done here, as whoever guarded the Prison nowadays would certainly be expecting him; he would have to perform a ritual once he returned to the Winchesters. The motion as he prepared to leave would have been imperceptible to Dean, Sam, or Noelle, but Zerachiel and Ithuriel immediately flanked him, their wings clamping down on his own, pinning him between them. _Sonuvabitch! _swore a voice that sounded suspiciously like Dean's, within Castiel's mind.

"We _will _find her, Castiel," said Zerachiel. His arrogance was nearly tangible as Castiel struggled against his captors. "You'll save yourself a lot of pain by just telling us now."

"I am not giving her up to you," Castiel growled, as Ithuriel reached within the sleeve of his robe and grasped his sword. He flared his wings to try and push them away from him, but only succeeded in wrenching one of the large muscles in his back. Panic flooded him – this was wrong. He was no archangel and of course facing off against two un-vesseled angels while he was occupying Jimmy put him at a huge disadvantage, but he was certainly strong enough to break free of the hold they had him in.

Zerachiel read the confusion emanating from him and laughed. "It was only a matter of time, you know. Raphael accessed our Father's control room, so to speak."

"Meaning what?" spat Castiel.

"Meaning you are again cut off from Heaven," said Ithuriel.

Castiel heard Dean's voice again, this time much louder: _FUCK! _This could not happen, he could not be as diminished as he was after his rebellion, he could not possibly hope to fix his Home with his grace sputtering like a candle flame drowning in wax. _No, no, no. Shit. No._

"Oh, and Castiel?" added Zerachiel casually.

Castiel turned a wordless stare on him, wishing that he had chosen to carry an extra sword. Or that he had a box-cutter handy to banish them with a sigil. Or _something._

"Someone of Lucifer's bloodline is summoning Raphael as we speak," he said smugly. "One Samuel Campbell. He _has _your precious little daughter of Eve."

Had someone told him that he would become even more afraid and livid than he already was, he would have thought it impossible, but the rage increased. "So this was all – a distraction?" he barely ground out.

"Mm. This way, she gets no divine intervention, you see? Not from you, anyway." He turned to his partner. "Take him away, Ithuriel."

* * *

Dean's pacing was driving Noelle nuts. The silence was stifling, broken only by the sound of his heavy footfalls moving from one corner of the motel room to another, throwing a gaze about that couldn't decide whether it was angry, relieved, confused, or worried. The cocktail of emotions produced an anger all on its own, so the knitted brows and thin-set mouth dominated his entire face, but the rest of it was there, too; just diminished.

He stopped in the dead center of the room.

"I'm just going to make a list of everything wrong with this right now," he said, voice strained. He was trying to make sense of all of it. Noelle couldn't blame the vein throbbing in his temple; she would be stressed as well.

Hell, she _was_ stressed.

Dean gestured towards Gregory's prone form on one of the beds. "First of all, _that._ You said he's the one who attacked you the other night, and we're letting him sleep over?"

"He was just protecting his family and he's lucky he survived the amount of dead man's blood they were pumping into him," Noelle said mechanically.

Dean ignored that. "Second of all, holy oil works on you. That's just – that's just awesome."

"Well, I'm sorry that Ridley didn't tell me biting the apple would give me _angel powers,"_ she snapped.

He ignored that, too. "Third, where the hell is Cas?"

"Yeah, that's not looking good," commented Sam from his seat at the small table.

Dean seemed deaf to everyone. "And fourth," he added, rounding on Gabriel, who sat on the counter with a shit-eating grin on his calm face, "_what the hell,_ Gabriel? We thought you were dead."

"I was dead," said Gabriel. "Lucifer got the jump on me, though in retrospect, trying to off him with his own trick probably was a bad idea…"

"Hey! Focus, dammit!" snarled Dean.

"I'm not understanding the hostility, here," said Gabriel coolly. "I just rescued your princess from her tower. A little gratitude, maybe?"

"You've known him longer than I have," interrupted Noelle before Dean's blood pressure could creep any higher. Although she didn't really appreciate his metaphor. "You know he's grateful you saved me, Gabriel. He's just shit at showing it."

"Yeah, if there's one thing Winchesters suck at, it's emotion," said Gabriel. "You really fit in swimmingly with them. Anywho, Cas was in no position to swoop in and save your pretty little ass, Noelle, so I figured I'd do the kid a favor and save him the trouble."

"My hero," said Noelle sardonically. "What do you mean, no position? Is he okay, was – was I right, are they holding him up in Heaven?"

Gabriel made a peculiar face, sucking his lips to one side and glancing upwards. "Yeah."

"Well go get him!" snapped Dean.

"Not really that simple." Gabriel was still focused on the ceiling. "Y'see, the whole thing was perfectly timed, so at the exact moment Raphael was descending from Heaven, Castiel was being dragged to Prison."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning I had to make a _choice,_ you freakin' Neanderthal," said Gabriel impatiently. "Get Noelle away before Raphael showed up, or save Castiel from the mooks."

"Okay, so why'd you choose Noelle over Cas?" inquired Sam, whose only problem with this whole fucked up situation seemed to be the fact that Castiel was an asset that they may have lost.

"I'd never hear the end of his whining if I let Raphael get his hands on her," said Gabriel with a shrug. "Kid can really bitch, did you know that? I mean, first-class complainer. Also, I didn't want my selfless sacrifice to be in vain or anything. I mean, you guys couldn't have opened the Cage without my help, have we forgotten this? Didn't want all my hard work to go to waste. Which it would've if they got her."

"You told them about the Horsemen's rings?" asked Noelle, though for the life of her, she had no idea why. The phrase just popped into her head.

"So Girl Wonder's in the loop."

"What? No, I – honestly, I assumed Cas had opened the Cage," she said, conscious now of the fact that it was a stupid assumption. "But… oh!"

Her head pounded; she clutched it, nails pressing to her scalp as images swam before her eyes. War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, each with their own brand of misery, each with a ring that helped them spread it, and the Allmighty knew that Lucifer's agents would look for the keys to his Cage within Heaven, so what better way to hide it than to entrust it in four parts to the four beings who would ultimately help Lucifer bring about the end of the world, and only Death knew, but only Death was eternal, and only Death _had _to know.

Noelle gasped as the rush of information faded, leaving her with a searing headache and hands that had bypassed "shaky" and were moving on to "wracked with palsy." At some point, Dean had joined her on the bed she was sitting on and pressed his hand to her back, steadying her as she listed to the side, against his shoulder.

"You okay?" he asked urgently.

"My _head,"_ she moaned, eyes shut against the spinning of the room. "God fucking dammit… this sucks…" She curled the fingers of one hand in the plaid shirt Dean wore over his tee. He smelled like sweat and blood from the ambush at the vampires' nest, which had taken place hardly three hours ago. A tiny pinprick of Cas's grace needled at her already-pained mind; she knew it came from the handprint on his shoulder.

"Shit, Noelle, your hands," he said, sounding surprisingly tender for all the venom he had spat moments earlier.

"I've never had a vision like that," she mumbled into his shirt. "It's always flashes of like… random scraps of knowledge… I _saw _God give the rings to the Horsemen."

"Mm, yeah, that'll happen," said Gabriel, the picture of nonchalance. Or so Noelle assumed by the tone of his voice, as she was pretty sure she would not be able to open her eyes without throwing up. "Humans were really not designed to be able to stomach the Fruit."

"No shit, Sherlock," said Sam.

Dean placed a hand on Noelle's forehead, then, satisfied she was not going to pass out (but without letting go of her; she remained half in his lap), he turned to Gabriel and said, "Back to Cas. You're an archangel, why can't you bust him out?"

"Because the only thing it would succeed in doing would be letting my brothers and sisters know I'm alive," said Gabriel. "And not to use an obvious pun, but there's not a snowflake's chance in Hell that I'm gonna blow my cover wasting my time doing something beyond my means, capisce?"

"I haven't meditated on Prison," Noelle mumbled. "What makes you so sure you can't get Cas?"

"The precautions, mostly. Castiel's public enemy number one up there. Think _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows._ Raphael is going to do everything in his not-unimpressive power to keep Castiel right where he is."

"Yeah, but aren't you just as powerful?" asked Dean. "You spent thousands of years moonlighting as a pagan god and none of your brothers knew a damn thing about it."

"There's a difference between disappearing and parading into Heaven, blowing my horn to announce to everyone I'm back, kid," Gabriel replied.

"You read _Harry Potter?"_ murmured Noelle.

"Slight change of topic: any chance you could do some soul-excavating?" asked Sam offhandedly. Dean shifted slightly; Noelle could see plainly that he was torn between "_fuck everything else we need to get Cas to safety if it kills us" _and "_I need my little brother back so bad it hurts."_

Gabriel scoffed. "I dunno what Apocalypse _you _stopped, Sam, but that Cage was specifically designed to be archangel-proof, since, you know, it contains an archangel or something. So no, I can't get near the thing."

"So what the hell can you do?" demanded Dean.

"Uh, I'm sorry, who did I just rescue from Raphael, again?"

"He's right," said Noelle as firmly as she could force her voice to sound. "Without him, Raphael would already be picking my brains. Not gently. With something sharp. And then we'd all be fucked. We'll find a way to get Cas back, Dean." She dragged herself away from him and blinked; the room was a little blurry, but she could stand without falling. "Gabriel… thank you."

His expression didn't become any less smarmy, but it softened a little. "Whatever, kid. But I doubt you're going to have any luck with Cas."

Noelle shook her head. "No, I think I might. If I meditate long enough, maybe I'll be able to find a way to spring him. Something God didn't want the angels to know. When He planted the Tree, He was hiding stuff from you guys as much as He was hiding it from humans, right?"

"Yeah, you should've seen the fit Luci threw," said Gabriel almost fondly. "Well, okay… good luck."

"What, you're just gonna leave?" demanded Dean. "C'mon, man, you're the first angel who wasn't Cas I've been glad to see since… Jesus, since before Anna went all vigilante on us. And that was a long goddamn time ago."

"Although we could've done without the porno at the end of your video," added Sam. Dean grimaced as Gabriel laughed.

"Had to leave something for you guys to remember me by, right?"

"Ugh, you're a dick."

Gabriel grinned broadly. "I'm a Trickster to the very end, now goodnight, gentlemen. Lady."

"Hey, do us a favor and get this out of here, wouldya?" Dean indicated Gregory.

"Who am I, your mailman?"

A flap of the wings and Gabriel vanished. Dean cursed under his breath.

"It's just as well," scolded Noelle. "You need to quit bossing angels around and I'd actually like some privacy. Why don't you go stash him in a cave or abandoned building or something – both of you?" she added.

"Noelle, are you sure you should be meditating right now?"

"Considering the fact that Cas is getting prison-raped in Heaven? Yes, I really am." She knew that it was a low blow, but she also knew that it would work. Dean's face nearly broke her heart as soon as she finished speaking, but he threw Gregory's limp body over his shoulder and jerked his head at Sam, who sighed and stood up.

"Some friendly advice before we go?"

"What, Sam?"

"If I were you, I'd try - how do I put it – try and password-protect your database or something. If you can lock it away once we get Cas back, then even if god-forbid Heaven or Hell gets their hands on you, it doesn't mean Armegeddon all over again."

Noelle weighed this in her mind, unperturbed by the fact that Sam had essentially just told her that it was a very real possibility. She knew it was. "After we save Cas, I'll look into it."

Sam nodded. As the door closed behind the brothers, Noelle drew the shades against the night, trying not to focus on what Sam had said. The idea flitted across her mind before she could squash it – crossroads demons, Hell, locking away everything they wanted to know, _Christian – _but she turned her full attention to Cas. She sifted through their luggage – one duffel bag each to the boys, a suitcase and a smaller duffel to Noelle. The former contained her clothes, but the latter, all of the tools that helped her get in the Zone, as the boys called it.

She dipped her finger in the patchouli oil she had bought at a New Age shop some months back and scribed a sigil on her forehead, over the metaphysical third eye, for clarity. That done, she lit a mix of eucalyptus and myrrh – the first to help her concentrate and the second to put her closer to the angels' plane of existence – and as the incense smoked, sat before it and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and trying not to dwell on the fact that if _she _was his best hope, Cas was probably screwed.

* * *

_And in the next chapter, tons of shit goes wrong. It's also the last chapter I have finished, so far._


	10. When You Fell From Heaven

**I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO POST THIS CHAPTER SINCE WEDNESDAY THE TWENTY-THIRD. THIS WEBSITE HATES ME.**

Author's notes: I've had this chapter planned since I started writing the story, and Heaven is just as difficult to try and write about as I anticipated. Oh, and FYI – as of three-quarters of the way through chapter eleven, Bitter or Sweet is officially a novel-length fic. The end is STILL not in sight. And I have a question for you guys at the end of the chapter, but it contains a spoiler for this story, so only read the last note at the bottom if you don't mind that.

(The Mother of All is Eve. Three cheers for accidentally plagiarizing canon before it was aired.)

**Chapter Ten**

It had occurred to Castiel, when he had been dragged out of Jimmy Novak and taken to Heaven sometime between the raising of Samhain and the raising of Lucifer, how similar angels and demons could be. Such a thought, of course, had horrified him in its blasphemy at the time, but he was a different angel then. His doubts were only just beginning to surface, and the anxiety he had felt when he contacted Dean in a dream had been eating him alive, and during his first incarceration in the Prison, he had felt more afraid than ever before in his life. And to make everything worse, that was when he started thinking truly blasphemous thoughts, when they began to slice at his wings and dig at his grace and stab at his halo. Later, upon his release, he had dismissed the comparison as a byproduct of his fear, but with all the time he had spent with the Winchesters both before and after Sam jumped into Hell, he knew he had been right.

Angels and demons both operated on a _get it done by whatever means necessary _basis. Demons, granted, would jeopardize a mission to inflict a little unnecessary suffering, which Castiel had never known an angel to do, but ever since he had gotten to know the Winchesters, he had slowly realized that angels could be really sadistic, not just towards humans, but to their own kind.

Case and point would be the placement of his cell. They had placed him directly beside Camael's, when there were infinite other place they could have thrown him. He weighed out several different scenarios as his brother glanced at him. Zerachiel could have convinced him to turn against Castiel, though the likelihood of that was borderline nonexistent; Camael's intentions were just as pure as Castiel's own had been four years ago. No, the case was probably that they simply wanted him to feel just how out of his element the other angel was. Camael was no warrior. When humans thought of angels, they thought of angels like Camael, the gentle watcher who nudged soulmates in each other's directions, whose soft light simply radiated warmth and goodwill. They knew it, and they knew that Castiel knew it, that it would eat at his conscience, the conscience they mocked him for developing in the first place.

"I tried to warn you not to come," said Camael. His halo sparkled even in the dimness of the Prison; angels were used to light and clouds and celestial winds, and the Prison had been designed to plunge them into damp, gray bleakness to make them uncomfortable. It worked. Of course it did. "They got to me before I could tell you it was a trap. Why have they left you in your vessel, brother?"

Castiel pretended he did not hear the apprehension in Camael's voice, which meant his brother had as bad a feeling about that particular fact as Castiel did, himself. "I don't know. It was careless of me not to leave him in the Doldrums."

"Nonsense, you've come up in your vessel many times before without consequence. There was no reason to assume this time may have been different."

Castiel looked his brother up and down. "You haven't been tortured," he said, relieved.

"No, they would gain nothing – they know I don't know where the girl is." Camael's wings shifted behind his white robe. "It's you I'm worried about."

"Don't. I've withstood them before." _For about a day, and that's being generous…_

Camael knew this, but he did not comment. "Do you think, maybe Balthazar will-?"

"I would not count on Balthazar," said Castiel firmly. "Is there anyone who knows you were taken?"

"Muriel may. I'm not sure. Perhaps Nisroc. That is, either of them may have figured it out by now, but no, no one explicitly knows. But-"

"Raphael is going to Noelle," Castiel interrupted. "Samuel Campbell is summoning him. They haven't imprisoned me to torture her location out of me. They've done it to keep me from helping her. If I could just contact someone-"

"No prayer can get through the Prison walls, you know that."

Castiel sighed. "I do." The world was _doomed._ Heaven had fallen to chaos. And now in this chaos, the pro-Apocalypse side was about to get their hands on the only person in the world who knew more than the angels themselves, however subconsciously, and end it. "Camael… I feel the need to apologize. You and the others have been valiant and true, and I have been honored to fight with you."

"Why apologize for that?" asked Camael softly. "We fought because we chose to."

"You chose the losing side." Castiel could practically taste the bitterness as he spat it out. "Once he has Noelle, Raphael is going to kill me. Of that, I'm certain. What I don't know is what he plans on doing to you and the rest of our… makeshift garrison. It is all my fault, and I am truly sorry."

Camael's resolve faltered, but his wings cocked with false bravado at the topmost joint. "Castiel, none of us were very close to you. Muriel even hated you. She spent a good deal of time lecturing me and Xaphan and Nisroc about your betrayal when Zachariah told us you'd shielded the Winchesters from him, though…" He smiled fondly, "…though to Xaphan, you were somewhat of a folk hero. My point is… you were always our brother, but not our friend, but when Sam Winchester overpowered Lucifer, we followed you because you were right. You were the only one who thought the Winchesters could succeed, and they did. We put all of our trust in you because we believed in you, and for no other reason. And you put that same trust in us even though you didn't know us, either. You haven't disappointed anyone, brother. We knew we were signing up for a risky battle."

Castiel nodded slowly, deeply regretting that he had not known the only remaining members of his ragtag garrison any better. They had started off strong, Heaven divided into thirds just as it had been when Lucifer fell (he squirmed at the comparison). Then, the sides had been God's followers, Lucifer's followers, and those who remained neutral. But this time, the angels were either on Raphael's side, on Castiel's side, or just doing their best to create havoc and disorder. There was only one generation of angels in Heaven younger than his own, and most of them like Camael, Muriel, Xaphan, and Nisroc, had joined him, as had about half of what remained of his generation, and precious few older angels. They had been a formidable force at the beginning, but Raphael had the advantage of age and experience, and he had picked off the members of Castiel's side as steadily as he could until their numbers made him worry that they would never stand a chance.

Not that it mattered now.

"Brother," said Camael suddenly, a welcome break from the turmoil inside Castiel's head, "if I tell you my true concern here, I trust you won't take it offensively?"

"Speak your mind, Camael. I value your insight."

"I…" He hesitated. "I never thought seeing one of my brothers alive would cause me unease, but Castiel… except for those of us who follow you, all of Heaven wants you dead. If they have the girl's location, why haven't they killed you?"

Castiel had thought of this as well. He turned what he hoped was a comforting gaze onto his brother and replied, with as much serenity as he fould fake, "I'm not worried. I'm certain there is still something they want from me."

"Lying is a sin, Castiel."

Castiel jumped to his feet, facing Raphael with his shoulders squared, though he couldn't help but remember that he had only survived their last encounter thanks to Balthazar's intervention. If the only archangel left in Heaven was imposing while occupying a vessel, he was terrifying in his true form, his halo a crackling web of lightning, his grace a force that made the very walls tremble. Castiel tried not to let his fear show.

"Come," said Raphael, holding up one hand and pushing the wall of Castiel's cell aside. "We have about seven Earth days before we say goodbye, brother."

#

Noelle couldn't understand it, but time continued to pass even though Castiel was missing. The dates ticked by. Christmas Eve still came.

Time may have kept going, but Noelle felt stuck – halted – unable to move forward. Without her awkward, quirky mentor, the days ceased to be days and felt instead like one prolonged, continuous nightmare. Not having Cas sucked. Thinking about where he was sucked even worse. Knowing it was because of her felt like a knife in her heart, close to how she felt knowing that Christian's brutal murder was because of her. She had dared to ask Dean what he thought was happening to their guardian angel, but as soon as the question passed her lips, she wished she had kept her mouth shut; the way Dean's face twisted was answer enough.

"Last time Heaven arrested him," Sam said, when it became obvious Dean wasn't going to say anything, "he was just beginning to trust us over Zachariah. When he came back, he was Heaven's bitch again. He sold out Anna, back when she was our ally. This time, he's not their subordinate, but their enemy. I doubt it's good up there."

Dean had left the room.

He felt Castiel's absence, probably more than Noelle did. To her, Cas was a teacher and friend and the only person who understood the strange burden of being so close to God, even though her situation could not have been more different from his. But to Dean, he was more, and there was no hiding it anymore. When Sam and Dean came back from stashing Gregory somewhere away from them, she had broken the news that after five hours of meditation, she couldn't come up with a way to save him. Dean had ordered her harshly to try harder, but Noelle tried to explain that she literally couldn't; Prison simply showed itself as a massive gray fortress, steel, forbidding, impassable. Her mental probe simply couldn't reach that far. The conversation escalated into a screaming match that only ended when Noelle teleported onto the roof of the motel and didn't return for two hours. But she couldn't be mad at him for it; she wanted Cas back, too.

Gabriel had made a brief reappearance and told them that he would come back to let them know if anything changed: if he found a way to rescue Cas, if Raphael let him go, or if they killed him. Seven days passed and Gabriel did not show up. Noelle clung to the knowledge that whatever he was going through, he was still alive.

Sam called Bobby, who spent two days researching and finally called back to tell them he'd come up with squat. Hanging up the phone, Sam told Dean and Noelle that there was nothing they could do for Cas, and though hearing it out loud made Noelle bite her tongue to keep from screaming in frustration and Dean let out a stream of loud and helpless swearing, they both knew he was right.

Well, mostly right. There was _something_ Noelle could do.

On the fourth day after they lost Cas, Noelle had meditated on her own body, sinking into herself until she could read the sigils he had carved into her ribs. She had raised one metaphysical arm to wipe them clean, but a flash that seemed like it could have come from Castiel's blue eyes stayed her grace. If Raphael hadn't already come for her, it was only because Cas still hadn't broken under whatever they were doing to him and told them where she was. Noelle knew that if he was up there suffering for days under Heaven's torture for her sake alone, she would have done it in a heartbeat, but he wasn't. Sure, Cas cared about her in his own way and may – _may – _have withstood the torture regardless, but if Raphael got to her, the world would end. Period. She hated herself for it, but Noelle left the sigils as they were. She knew Castiel would want it that way.

And now it was Christmas Eve. Castiel had been gone for a week, and Gabriel had not come back, but Crowley had shown up the previous day to tell them that the werewolf trail could have picked up in Arizona and he wanted them there yesterday. She had daydreamed fondly of shooting him with rock salt right in his smug forehead and then exorcising him back to Hell, but he had left unhindered and Noelle and the boys were just getting settled into their Mesa motel room, preparing to start the hunt tomorrow: Christmas Day.

Noelle could hear a news program from the room as she washed shampoo out of her hair, singing softly to herself.

"_I'm dreaming of a white Christmas_…" She turned off the shower and got dressed in an old pair of pajama pants and camisole. "_Just like the ones I used to know… where treetops glisten and children listen to hear the sleigh bells in the snow…"_

"Christmas carols? Really?" asked Sam as she emerged from the bathroom, drying her short black hair.

She sank onto her bed miserably, casting the damp towel into a corner. "Don't judge me, it's stuck in my head. If you translate really loosely from French, 'Noelle LeBlanc' actually means 'white Christmas.' Christian used to wake me up on Christmas morning by blasting it from the living room…" Tears filled her eyes at the thought. It was Christmas Eve. They had lost Cas. _Christian was dead._ Five months had elapsed and the truth of it still hit her like a sucker punch. Christian was dead. Noelle scrubbed fiercely at her eyes; she hadn't cried in front of the Winchesters yet, and she planned on keeping it that way.

"Noelle?" said Dean.

She cleared her throat. "Going to bed. Night, guys." Ignoring the obvious concern in Dean's voice, she burrowed under the covers. Five months of chronic insomnia and living in extremely close quarters with two guys who didn't sleep at all and one who was awake just as often as she was had deadened her senses to the distractions of their voices and the sound of the TV. She got so little sleep that when her body decided it was time to conk out, it wouldn't matter if she were curled up with her head in a jet plane's engine.

#

_I'm dreaming of a white Christmas_

_ With every Christmas card I write_

_ May your days be merry and bright_

And may all your Christmases be white

The soft tune drifted up from the first floor. It felt like a gentle caress in Noelle's bedroom, even though the volume was at maximum and the sound would have blasted out her eardrums if she were in the living room, where the speakers were. She smiled into her ruffled pillow, breathing in the scent of home. Each motel bed she'd slept in had carried a different scent, some far less pleasant than others, but this was _home._ She was in her own room, with her own pink sheets that she had outgrown at age eleven and been too fond of to get rid of, and her own wall covered with posters of My Chemical Romance and Nightwish and the Beatles, and her own pillow with its girly, foofy ruffles that she loved so much.

Someone sat down beside her and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Hey, Noli," murmured Christian.

Noelle opened her eyes to see her big brother. She sat up slowly, joy absolutely seeping from her pores, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I'm dreaming," she murmured into his cheek.

"Yeah, sweetheart, you are," he replied tenderly, hugging her back so tight it squeezed the air out of her. Christian and his vicelike hugs and the stubble that he refused to shave properly and the leather jacket she'd left on the floor of a vampire's car. "But this is really me."

She sniffed. "Christian… s-so much has happened since I lost you…"

"I know," he soothed, rocking her gently. Crisp midwinter sunlight filtered in through her window, shining a panel of light over both of them. "I know. It's my fault, I'm so sorry. I should have told you about Ridley, only I thought…"

"It's okay," she murmured, sitting back and kissing her brother's cheek, breathing to steady the tears. She wanted to bawl and let him hold her like he had in the months following their parents' deaths, when she had woken up every night screaming. She wanted to cry so hard she couldn't breathe, cling to Christian until he was brought back to life by the sheer force of her love, stay here in this room until the universe realized its mistake and she could introduce Christian to Sam and Dean and tell him, _These are the guys who have been taking care of me, and you do it better, never leave me, never ever ever leave me again…_ But what she said was, "I thought I was going crazy, too."

He laughed, running a sheepish hand through his hair. His was thinner than hers, like their dad's. "I had no idea this would happen to you. Ridley just came to me and said you were in danger, and if I had the apple, you'd be okay. He was… strangely convincing for a talking snake. I-I didn't know-"

"Demons lie," said Noelle softly, remembering the many exorcisms while she'd been training under Castiel, with the demon in question cackling that her parents never loved her, that Sam and Dean were going to leave her, that Christian himself was in Hell right now because of her. "It's not your fault. How did you get into my dream, Chris?"

"He had a little help."

Noelle pushed the covers off and stood from her bed, not believing her eyes. Christian put a hand on her shoulder, as if he was afraid the newcomer was going to hurt her, but that made no sense. "Dad?" she asked quietly.

Their dad smirked, an expression the real Paul LeBlanc had never made in his life, to Noelle's knowledge. "No, I'm not your father. My name is Zerachiel, but Christian here can't percieve my true form, even in Heaven. You humans are so limiting."

"I—what—we're in Heaven?" cried Noelle. "Am I dead?"

"No, no," corrected Zerachiel. She wanted him _out _of her dad's face. "The cool thing about being an angel is… well, a lot of it is cool, but what's cool right now is dream projection. Your big brother and I are in Heaven, but Ithuriel's projecting us into your sleepy little head."

"Why?" she demanded.

"You promised you'd leave her alone if I did this for you," said Christian tersely. "You said you'd stop hunting her."

"We will, we will, chill out," replied Zerachiel, waving a dismissive hand. "But Raphael wants you to see something first."

"Raphael? You work for him? I should've guessed. What the hell have you assholes done with Cas?" She lunged at him, but Christian caught her around the waist.

"Be cool, Noli, please. If he hurts you, I… it's killing me inside that I can't protect you." His voice was pained in her ear.

Noelle took a deep breath and tried to subdue her fury, for Christian's sake. She was beginning to understand Dean's blood pressure problem. "What does Raphael want from me, if you're going to stop going after me?" she snarled at Zerachiel.

He smirked. "Come and find out."

Noelle glanced at Christian, whose eyes were now glued to the floor. She did not have to hear either of them say it to know he was not coming. Her mind teemed. If she could not bring Christian back, she at least wanted to stay with him – just one hour, to spend with him, to tell him all about her surrogate family and how lovably screwed up they were, chatter endlessly about the fact that Sam's insomnia was creepy as hell, the way Dean beamed with pride when she displayed some killer initiative on a hunt, the way Castiel tilted his face and narrowed his eyes when someone said something that flew over his head. But Christian was dead, and she would see him again soon enough, once she had a few hours to herself in Bobby's library, or dared to brave another meditation on Hell. And Castiel was still alive, and the one holding him wanted to see her. She kissed Christian's cheek.

"I love you," she whispered.

He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I love you too, Noli. Do me a favor and don't join me up here until you're an old grandma, okay?"

"Okay," she said with a sad smile. She wouldn't be joining him in Heaven at all.

"This is really touching and everything," drawled Zerachiel, "but we have an appointment. Let's go."

Christian gave Noelle one last squeeze before letting go of her. As she followed Zerachiel out of her room and down the familiar stairs of the home she so missed, an ache settled in her heart and stayed there, beating as it did. The angel led her through the front door; the stereo was now playing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." A sparkle of tinsel caught her eye and she turned away; she didn't want to see their favorite apple tree decked out and twinkling, not like this, not with Zerachiel in front of her and Christian dead and Castiel in trouble. They stopped at the gate to the orchard, the one that led to the Crossroads about three miles up. Noelle turned to Zerachiel's relaxed form, sucking on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from lashing out. Or biting open her arm if she had to and drawing the banishing sigil on the gate. Even if it didn't work in a dream, it would give her some satisfaction.

"Well, here we are."

"Here we're where?"

"The gates of Heaven. But since we're translating it into your mind, _you_ see the gates of your little orchard. Take a look over it."

Noelle surveyed him for a few seconds, trying to discern whether or not he was serious. When his expression didn't change, she did just that, climbing it like she used to as a child.

The view almost blinded her.

Noelle had to remind herself she was dreaming as she stared down, hundreds of feet below her toes, onto a circular room that swirled electric blue and light sunny yellow and purest white. It looked almost like a courtroom, with a raised podium where the twelve would be on a clock and several smaller podiums facing the middle. Noelle turned to Zerachiel to ask what exactly it was she was supposed to be looking at, but his hand darted to her forehead and they were suddenly seated in two chairs behind the largest podium, and several seats had been filled.

With angels.

Noelle had caught a glimpse of Castiel's true form when he'd spirited her out of her hospital room seconds after biting the apple, but he had put her to sleep a split second later; all she had seen was a shaft of white light. But here she was, sitting behind the angel at the podium, his back to them. His form made her cringe; there was a powerful, undeniable strength to his grace. It made her head spin. Another couple of angels sat at his side, but what made Noelle finally feel afraid was the last angel, who stood in the dead center of the room, holding up a semiconscious Castiel by the collar of his trenchcoat.

"Cas!" Noelle cried desperately.

He looked terrible. On this plane of existence, she could see his wings and not just their shadows. The feathers were streaked with blood that dripped onto the floor, where they were not torn out in raw, gore-clotted patches. He was not bound, but he was so pale and so much of his blood was smeared over his wings and into his trenchcoat and down his face and neck that Noelle almost wished he had been, because at least then, it would mean he posed some kind of threat. His eyes hardly fluttered when she cried his name.

Raphael turned to her – the one in front of her could only have been Raphael – but just glancing at his face felt like a flashlight beam to the eyes. She focused instead on a point off to his left, staring into the infinite white. Her knees shook.

"This all could have been avoided," he said, his voice thrumming within her until her very eardrums felt as if someone had driven tuning forks into them, "had you given yourself up. It is too late now."

"Leave Cas alone," she said, shouting to be heard. "All he wants is _peace,_ can't you fuckshits see that?"

"Do you hear that, Castiel?" said Raphael. "She is just as brainwashed as your pathetic army. The difference is that we will rehabilitate them, and we will forgive them for giving in to your temptations. Lucifer had an agent in Heaven, and we have finally brought him to justice."

"Raphael…" The brokenness in Castiel's voice didn't belong there. The leader of the only righteous angels left in Heaven should never be reduced to the pallid, bleeding man before them, who was only able to stand because one of the angels held him upright. "I have been let down by our Father… by my brothers… and I have been tempted by Lucifer. And still my loyalty lies with Heaven."

"Lies," said Raphael with the conviction of God Himself. "And now you will be punished for them. Ithuriel."

The angel holding Castiel murmured a short Enochian incantation. Noelle did not undertand the exact words, but it translated vaguely through her grace: something about restraint. A pair of shackles seemed to materialize from the air before Ithuriel's outstretched hand, which he locked around Castiel's limp wrists, drawing each out to the side, holding him fast to an invisible cross.

"Leave him alone," she repeated, but the words came out in a whisper. "Please."

"Do it," commanded Raphael.

Ithuriel plunged his hand into Castiel's chest. His eyes clenched shut with the force of his agonized scream, as the angel's arm dug within his body. Each cry bit off before it was truly finished, resulting in a choked succession of rapid screams that made Noelle rage against Zerachiel, who had grabbed her to keep her from interfering. She wanted to look away, but her eyes would not obey. Helpless and human, she could only watch as Ithuriel withdrew his hand. A soft glow of bluish light emanated from it.

He had torn out Castiel's grace.

"NO!" screamed Noelle, fighting Zerachiel anew. "NO, NO, NO!"

Raphael seized her face with one hand. It felt like a bolt of lightning. "He will fall directly above your motel," he said coldly. "I would hurry if I were so unfortunate as to be in your place. Ithuriel, if you please."

Ithuriel threw Castiel's limp frame off the edge of the floor and into the white abyss below.

#

Noelle's entire body shot out of her bed, two very thick streams of wetness sliding down her face. She was mid-scream.

"Noelle!" cried Dean. "Jesus Christ, you're crying blood – what the fuck happened-?"

"Cas!" she barely spat out, before teleporting onto the roof, leaving the brothers clueless.

She only had about five seconds before the boys burst out of their room beneath her, calling her name, but it only took three to throw her grace as high and far as it could reach and locate Castiel. He felt different, his presence was tiny and only the barest spark of whatever angelic essence was left in him shone, but she found him, thousands of feet in the air, completely unconscious and plummeting. There was no thought, there was only action: Noelle bent space until she could throw her arms around him. He was broader than she was, and air and gravity did their best to wrench him from her grip, but she held fast to him as she joined him in his freefall, both of them speeding towards the ground below. Her back suddnely burned, white-hot nails digging in ridges along her shoulderblades as if from within, and the ink wings burst from her skin, showering both of them with blood, and flapped against the air.

Their path veered.

She could not get a handle on an air current, could not bring them out of their fall, but her wings flapped regardless. The ground kept flying upwards, slowed only by a few feet per second. Noelle may have been screaming. The wind drowned it out. Some fifteen feet above the ground, she at last managed to gain a precious few inches of altitude, before her grace withered inside her and she fell into blackness.

#

All Sam and Dean saw from the street was a red-streaked trenchcoat, two heads of black hair, and a pair of two-dimensional wings. It looked as if they had been sketched in charcoal across the sky; the brothers could see the stars between the lines of the feathers.

Then, Noelle and Castiel hit the motel's lawn and those wings became ashen impressions on the grass in the pale, sickly glow of a streetlight.

* * *

_I GOT YOU THIS CLIFFHANGER. I'M REALLY SORRY ABOUT IT. (I had originally intended to post this chapter closer to Christmas 2010, but as you can see, that didn't really happen… so, um, happy spring?)_

_That question I mentioned at the beginning (spoiler alert for this fic): This story has gotten so far away from anything I originally planned on doing, and now I find myself about to write something that may make people a little angry. Noelle ends up with a canon character (it's not Sam, Dean, or Castiel). It's probably not hard to figure out who, but even so, I'm not going to say because my question is, should I put that "canonxOC" in the summary now, even though it happens towards the end of the story? It'd be like having a spoiler in the summary, because the whole thing is a surprise to the characters and if I've done my job, to the readers as well. Everyone has seemed to like Noelle, and now she's gone and done this to me. Sigh. So, advice?  
_


	11. Land Locked Blues

_Author's notes:__ Updating sooner than I'd planned because I felt really bad about the cliffhanger and I love you guys a lot. Also, holy neglecting-everything-in-my-entire-life-except-this-fic, Batman! I think I've forgotten the meanings of words like "schoolwork," "cleaning," and "original fiction."_

**Chapter Eleven**_  
_

Everything hurt, but mostly it was the hole in his heart.

Humans were fond of using such expressions to describe the loss of a boyfriend or girlfriend, a friend, a lover, but no – Castiel literally felt as if someone had taken a blunt knife and carved a ragged hole into the organ and then left the instrument there. With every beat, the invisible hand holding it applied a merciless twist.

Blowing out the last of his grace on their failed mission to rescue Adam Milligan did not feel the same as having it ripped out while he was still occupying Jimmy Novak.

Castiel dragged his eyelids apart. He was lying on a bed in an uncomfortable gown, staring up at the ceiling. There was water damage forming a brown, ugly stain, and the tiles sagged towards the foot of his bed. He turned his head towards the door, grimacing as his neck protested with a couple of loud cracks, to see Sam dozing in the chair beside his hospital bed, his long legs crossed, his face resting on his fist.

Something was strange about that.

"Sam." The sound of his own voice shocked him; it came out in a croak, and a very strained and weak croak, at that, but it did the job. Sam opened his eyes.

"Cas!" he cried, absolutely beaming. "Thank god you're awake. How do you feel?"

Castiel shut his eyes. "I'm going to spare myself having to answer that question."

"Right – yeah – sorry I asked. Listen, I have to get the nurse, they made me promise I would when you woke up." "Sam." Sam paused. "Where is Dean?"

"We're taking it in shifts," he explained. "I made him go back to the motel to get some sleep."

"Taking what in shifts?"

Sam blinked. "Sitting up with you and N– um – just, you know. He's been in here every single day."

"Every single… how long have I-"

"It's been almost a week, Cas. They thought you were brain dead, but, you know, they thought the same thing last time…"

"Right…" Castiel tried to sit up, but Sam put his hands on his shoulders.

"At least wait for a nurse, seriously."

Castiel paused for a few seconds. "You seem…"

"Like I have my soul back. Yeah. Dean will explain. I'll call him while I'm getting the nurse, okay?"

"All right… and – Sam!" he added before Sam could leave. He turned around just before the door. "Where is Noelle?"

His face darkened. "She hasn't woken up yet."

#

The obnoxiously perky nurse had just finished ordering Sam to make sure the now heavily medicated Castiel ate the tray of food she'd left with them when Dean entered the room, his face stricken with worry.

"Thank god," he said, dragging up a chair beside Sam's. He paused, hand hovering over Castiel's shoulder like he wanted to clap it as he usually did, but the bandages wrapped around his entire chest seemed to make him reconsider and he ruffled Castiel's hair instead. Castiel wasn't sure how he felt about that. It felt like a somewhat patronizing gesture, but it also felt kind of nice.

"Hello, Dean."

"Hello yourself. Son-of-a-_bitch _have we been worried about you. You all right?"

"Can you two please refrain from asking me such stupid questions?" he muttered. The morphine made his brain feel sluggish.

"Sorry, sorry. We're just glad to see you alive, Cas. You wanna tell us what happened?"

Castiel looked at Dean. He seemed concerned, not demanding, and it was for that reason alone that Castiel didn't ask both of them to leave. But neither did he offer any description of what had elapsed in the week between his arrest and his judgement. "An angel named Ithuriel ripped out my grace and apparently threw me from Heaven. What else do you need to know?"

The brothers both seemed to comprehend. "Nothing you don't want to tell us," said Sam gently.

Even given the circumstances, Castiel could not help but smile at the return of the Sam who had leapt into Hell for them, the Sam who had only broken the final Seal because he believed he was saving the world. "How did this happen?" he asked, nodding towards Sam and immediately wishing he hadn't. His head swam.

"Quit moving," said Sam. "You're really hurt, Cas."

"I arrived at the same conclusion without your input, now someone please explain just _how _you managed to extract Sam's soul from the Cage." He looked expectantly at Dean, who shifted.

"Called in a favor."

"To who?"

"To Death."

Castiel raised his eyebrows. "To the _Horseman _Death?"

"No, to the _beet farmer _Death. Don't give me that look, it was a dumb question. And he gave me his ring pretty willingly, don't forget," said Dean. "He's not evil… okay, at least not the way the other Horsemen were evil. Anyway, long story short, I was Death for a day and Sam has a soul again."

"What do you remember?" Castiel asked Sam, choosing to ignore the fact that Dean had spent a day acting as Death, mostly because he felt that he was happier not knowing exactly how Dean had managed to screw it up (he could tell by Dean's face that that was exactly what had happened). He had tried to ignore the knowledge thus far, but Michael and Lucifer had definitely not shown Sam's soul much kindness while it had been trapped in the Cage with them. This outcome was far better than he'd hoped; he hadn't expected the old Sam back, not this soon, not this healthy.

Sam spread his hands. "Nothing. Death put up a 'wall' between my memories of Hell and the rest of my mind. And my memories of everything since I got topside."

"I had a lot of fun explaining the pooka to him," said Dean.

"Wait, so… you have no memories of Noelle?" Castiel asked.

"No. I don't. I mean, I've sat up with her a couple times-"

"After I spent two hours bullying him into doing it," Dean interrupted. "He felt all awkward about it."

"-and when I see her, I feel like I know her, but… no, I don't remember her at all."

Castiel again struggled to sit up. This time, it was Dean who pushed him back down. "Seriously. Don't move that much, dude."

"No, I'm not in pain," he insisted. Dean did not look convinced.

"Morphine," explained Sam.

The shock that followed seemed rather unwarranted. "Morphine? They gave him morphine? Dammit, I told them no narcotics."

"Why on earth did you do that?" asked Castiel, who could not begin to fathom why someone with a shattered leg, a fractured arm, a concussion, lacerations to most of the chest, and severe bruising absolutely everywhere would ever be refused pain medication.

"You'll thank me in 2014."

"What?"

"Nothing, nevermind."

Castiel changed the subject. "Has Noelle been unconscious this entire time?"

"Yeah," said Dean, his face falling. "She broke her arm, but that was it. She got lucky. We think she fell on you, actually. They can't figure out why she won't wake up."

"What exactly happened?" Castiel asked. "Why is she hurt in the first place?"

The boys glanced at each other. "You don't remember?"

"No, the last thing I remember is…" _Ithuriel tearing my grace from my body "_…the trial."

"Oh," said Dean. "Well, we were actually hoping you could explain something to us. Sam here doesn't remember it, obviously, but when, uh… when you fell, she suddenly woke up, crying blood and babbling your name. She up and vanished and the next thing we knew, both of you were falling out of the sky and, I shit you not, she had wings."

"She had wings," repeated Castiel. "I'm really too medicated to joke with you, Dean."

"I'm not joking," he said. "It was like the tattoos came off her back. They weren't like normal wings, it looked like someone drew them right in the air. But the only reason either of you survived was because she flew upwards just a little and you fell about fifteen feet instead of thousands."

Castiel blinked. None of what Dean had just said seemed in the least bit possible, but he'd been wondering how he survived as well. Stranger things had happened, he supposed. So the tattooed wings had served a purpose after all. And Noelle had saved his life.

Dean settled the tray containing Castiel's food on his lap and surveyed it, politely changing the subject, probably for Castiel's own sake. "Kind of sucks that your first meal of your second time as a human has to be hospital food."

"Is hospital food any different from any other kind of food?" he inquired dully. The reality of everything was just now beginning to settle in like his veins were filling with lead. He had lost the war, he had let down Camael and the other angels who had put all their faith in him, and now all of them were going to be subjected to weeks or years in Prison. Some of them, like Xaphan, were so stubborn they might not submit to Raphael at all, and then what would happen to them? It was all his fault, all of it. He focused on the food balanced on Dean's legs because all of this filled him with a terrible pain that the morphine couldn't touch.

"Yeah. Way different. Once you're up and about, we'll get you some real food."

"Dean, we exist solely on diner food and takeout," snorted Sam. "_We _don't eat real food."

"Sammy, that is the _only _real food. Everything else is a lie. Including these pancakes." Dean was opening a small container that held some kind of viscious brown liquid, which he poured over the large golden cakes on the paper plate. He cut a wedge out of the stack and held it up to Castiel, who stared in disbelief.

"I really hope the implication that you plan on feeding me is a mistake in my own judgement, Dean."

"Okay then, tough guy, move your arms."

Castiel's right arm had a hairline fracture, and the sling didn't lend itself to much movement, but even moving his left arm sent arrows of sharp pain through the haze of morphine. Refusing to succumb to it, he reached for the fork in Dean's hand, but the pain grew in intensity until, defeated and quite unhappy about it, he let his arm fall to his lap, closing his eyes. He could not believe this at all.

"You know what, I'll just go sit with Noelle for awhile," said Sam hastily, making his way out of the room. Castiel was glad for it, though even he could tell that Sam really lacked subtlety.

"We will never speak of this again," Castiel told Dean once the door closed behind his brother, looking straight at him. _"Ever."_

"You're the only guy I know who thinks he can be scary in a hospital gown," said Dean cheerily. "This never happened, Cas. Now open wide."

Grudgingly, Castiel obeyed, wincing as he chewed. It tasted _almost _pleasant, teasingly close to being enjoyable but just not there, but he had a feeling it would be much better if it were hot throughout, rather than startlingly cold at one end and far too hot at the other, and the syrup must have been in a refrigerator. Dean grinned.

"I told you it was bad."

"Why they serve this to hospitalized people is beyond me. Don't they think patients have suffered enough?"

"Yeah, I know, adding insult to injury."

Castiel would gladly have suffered the bad meal if he had been able to eat it without assistance; this was degrading. The only reason he did not complain more (like he really, _really _wanted to) was because Dean just seemed at peace in a way that Castiel had never really seen.

"Sam is… better than I hoped," he said between bites.

"Did you think this was going to end in disaster or something?"

"It's just that his soul has been stuck in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer for a year. I was expecting… honestly, I was expecting Sam to need a long time to recover. How stable is this wall Death put in his mind?"

"If he doesn't scratch at it, he should be fine," Dean replied.

Knowing Sam, though… Castiel shook the thought away. Hopefully, he would leave well enough alone. Sam wasn't dumb, he just didn't always listen to reason. Or his conscience. Or… well, anything. He choked down another bite of pancakes, grimacing; this time, it was ice cold throughout.

"I'd like to see Noelle," he said.

"You're on bed rest until at least tomorrow, doc's orders. I'll take you to her first thing, okay?"

"All right," Castiel agreed reluctantly.

"Oh, and you've had another visitor, too, besides just me and Sam."

"What – who? Bobby came all the way from South Dakota?" Somehow, Castiel couldn't quite picture that, not if he were the one injured and not one of the boys.

"No, not Bobby. But we're going to his place once Noelle wakes up so you two can get some rest."

"I don't need rest."

"Bullshit. You look like the guy from _A Clockwork Orange _after he jumps out the fucking window_. _Anyway, no, it was Gabriel who came to see you."

"What… Gabriel?" Castiel asked, hardly believing it. "Gabriel is dead."

"Gabriel _was _dead," Dean corrected. "All that vampire shit? That was Samuel luring us in. It was all a trap, even that vampire attacking Noelle the night we almost got wrecked by a semi. Samuel kidnapped her and was about to summon Raphael, but Gabriel got there first and saved her."

"How did he come back?"

"We're assuming the same way you did. Twice."

"You think God resurrected him?"

"Why not?" Dean shrugged. "Anyway, yeah, he came by. He might come back, he said he would."

Castiel nodded. The thought filled him with a strange mix of contentment and dread. The last time he had seen Gabriel, the archangel had effectively handed him his ass, to use what Castiel had come to consider a "Winchesterism," then trapped him in some kind of bunker at least two continents away while he played mind games with the boys. But then again, it _was _Gabriel, and Gabriel's sense of humor had always been… twisted.

#

Gabriel did come back.

Sam and Dean had left once visiting hours were over, and it was now well past midnight and Castiel was trying to sleep (vainly attempting to suppress the racing thoughts that filled his mind alternatingly with images of his garrison being tortured for their loyalty, of Noelle never waking up, of Raphael freeing Michael and Lucifer) when the blinds on his window blew in a fierce gust that made his sheet whip halfway off his bed. He opened his eyes.

"Gabriel," he said, sitting up.

The older angel grinned from where he had perched himself on Castiel's bedside table. "Hey, little brother," he said. "Feeling all right?"

Castiel only glared in response.

"I didn't think so."

"Thank you for rescuing Noelle," he said, instead of encouraging Gabriel. "Dean told me what happened. Gabriel, how did you survive? They told me Lucifer killed you."

"Yeah, Lucifer killed me all right." Gabriel shrugged. "I guess Dad came through for me after all. I dunno, though, going to one soccer game doesn't exactly make you father of the year, does it?"

Castiel fell silent once more, looking to the side. Gabriel heaved a sigh, and Castiel didn't have to look at him to know that he was rolling his eyes.

"Look, whatever variation of 'I failed my Father' is running through your head right now, don't sweat it. Anyone else with your gig would have given up long before this. So can we skip the pep talk?"

"Yes, Gabriel," Castiel said wearily. "We can skip the pep talk. I don't want to hear it." He rubbed his forehead, feeling extremely small, even smaller than he had felt after falling to his hands and knees before Pestilence, coughing up blood as his lungs crumpled inside his chest. Heaven was doomed. He tried to put it out of his mind. "I don't suppose you plan on going home, Gabriel."

"Not on your life," the archangel replied cheerfully. "But I did go visit the kids and let them know that Raphael was on his way."

"What?"

"Your, uh, foot soldiers," said Gabriel, shrugging. "The little ones – well, the littl_er _ones. Muriel, Nisroc, and Xaphan. They've gone into hiding so Raph doesn't throw them in Prison, and they warned a bunch of other anti-apocalypticos. The resistance is still there, just underground now. They're not gonna let all your work go to waste, Cas."

Relief washed over him. Maybe Heaven wasn't doomed after all. Maybe Muriel, Nisroc, and Xaphan would somehow be able to help Camael escape Prison. Maybe Balthazar would even show his cowardly face and help as well.

"I am… glad to hear that," Castiel said, guarding his voice carefully. "But why did Raphael not just kill me? Why rip out my grace? Where _is _my grace?"

"Nowhere on Earth," said Gabriel immediately. "I checked. Most likely they've locked it up in Heaven. I don't know what Raphael's endgame was with this stunt, but if he went through all the trouble to get it out of you, he's not going to let it out of his sight. So don't ask me to go get it for you."

"I wasn't going to," Castiel replied. It was a lie, but Gabriel didn't have to know that. "What about Noelle?" he asked instead.

"What about her?"

"Is… Dean told me that the doctors don't know why she won't wake. There's no medical reason for her not to. Do you know anything about it?"

Gabriel shrugged again. "My guess is that in order to catch you, she used a little more juice than she actually had. Her grace probably hijacked some of her soul to do it and tore it up a little. I'm going to assume that when her soul recovers, she'll wake up."

"How long will that take? Will the damage be permanent? Will she – still be Noelle?"

"I don't know," Gabriel said nonchalantly. "I'm not really an expert on human souls. And now I'm out of here. Sorry I didn't bring you a get-well card, but—"

"Wait!" Castiel cried. "Gabriel, you're just going to go back into hiding? After you _helped _Sam and Dean defeat Lucifer?"

Gabriel turned a rather icy glare onto him. "I didn't say that. I just finished telling you that the resistance isn't gone, kid. It's just switching tactics. They tried it your way, and it didn't work. Full-frontal assault is only a fair fight when the other side is just as strong – or weak – as yours, so we're going to be doing more sneak attacks and ambushes and infiltration. So _relax_. I'm going to help out. When I feel like it. And I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you did, I'm a little pissed off about how the whole 'defeating Lucifer' thing ended."

Castiel didn't reply to that. He had known Gabriel very well when he was a child, despite their coolness towards one another now. It was Gabriel who had tried to teach him that it was all right to love humans, when he had first failed as a watcher and been reassigned to Anna's garrison of avengers. It was Gabriel who had insisted that humans were designed to be loved. Because Gabriel felt love like no other angel, for both humanity and for his brothers. Watching Michael and Lucifer fight nearly to the death had been too much for him. Castiel knew that giving Sam and Dean the keys to his brother's cage had been difficult enough; he could understand Gabriel's anger that not only had Lucifer been damned back to Hell, but Michael had as well.

He considered informing Gabriel that the boys also had a brother in Hell, but decided against it.

"We did not forsee that outcome," he said instead. "But if Raphael has his way, Michael and Lucifer will both be free before long."

"And I'm going to fight to keep it from happening," Gabriel replied. "Just don't expect me to like it, Castiel. And by the way, you're probably not going to be too happy about it, but I carved the Enochian sigil on your ribs like you did to Heckle and Jeckle. Figured we didn't need anyone going after you. The only thing is that the kids can't answer you if you pray to them; we think Raphael is going to catch onto us before long and you can bet he'll be keeping an eye out for any of them going down to Earth."

"I understand," said Castiel grimly, "but there must be another way - that leaves me unable to help, Gabriel."

"Exactly." Gabriel held up a hand to silence Castiel's protest. He spoke without derision. "No, listen to me, little brother. It's the end of the line for you. This is an angels' war and you're not an angel anymore."

Castiel knew this. He had known since regaining consciousness hours ago. Having become human before, he recalled perfectly the empty, hollow feeling where his grace should be, the overwhelming weakness, the sense that suddenly the world was very big, and he was very, very tiny. It was all just the same – made worse, even, because the last time, he had matyred his grace, he had become human through actions of his own. He had fully expected to die, then. But this time, it had been taken from him by force, and Castiel felt more powerless than he ever had in his long life. And hearing it from his brother's mouth cemented it in reality.

Gabriel looked at him sadly. "I'm sorry, Cas." Then he flew off, folding space with the wings he still had, the grace he had not lost.

* * *

_Okay, I skipped over Dean getting Sam's soul because it's essentially the same thing that happened in the show, just much, much, much later. A little behind-the-scenes intel that I tried to work into the story but it was just awkward to cram in: Dean did try to lie and keep Sam from realizing that he was Sambot for a million years, but he soon realized that even he wouldn't be able to keep his story straight, since ninety-eight percent of it was bullshit and he didn't think he could count on Noelle and Cas to stick to the same story, and told Sam the truth. Crowley hasn't shown up since, but the boys are pretty sure he knows Sammy's got his soul back, which means he has no leverage. They're hoping to never see him again. And everyone knows that the Winchesters' lives ALWAYS work out the way they hope._

_And no one seems angry about Noelle shacking up with a canon character, yay. Special thanks to DemonUntilDeath, who gave me some lovely and wise advice. Did I mention that I have fantastic readers and you're all frigging wonderful? Seriously, the amount of encouragement I'm getting from you guys makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm not too upset about the small number of reviews - quality over quantity and all that. You guys rock.  
_

_**Also, a note about Exit Seraphim to those of you reading it:**__ I'm hoping to get Bitter or Sweet done in one fell swoop. The amount I have been working on it is a little surreal. If I were this zealous with my original work, I would literally have finished three novels by now. Once I've finished Bitter or Sweet, I'll have more time to work on Exit Seraphim (and hopefully my novel, but hey, who needs to get paid when there's fanfiction). I'm still going to work on it while Bitter or Sweet is still being written, but once this monstrosity of a fic is over, I'm going to put much more time and effort into Exit Seraphim. I know I haven't updated it in weeks, but I have no plans of abandoning it._

_SORRY ABOUT THE EPICALLY LONG NOTES. THIS HAS BEEN A LONG-WINDED RAMBLE._


	12. Subterranean Homesick Alien

Author's notes: The alternate title for this chapter was "All Cas, All The Time."

**Chapter Twelve**

_"…with trepidation, noting the tiny leather jacket, the cocky grin, the way he took a bite of cake and then leaned back a little to enjoy it. But no – Lisa would have told him. There would have been a phone call, they would have had a long and painful discussion, Lisa would have slammed the phone to the ground in anger when Dean explained to her that he couldn't contribute financially. Not that he would have been unwilling, but to write checks, you needed a bank account. A real one. Somehow, he couldn't get the phrases 'credit card fraud' and 'child support' to work harmoniously in the same sentence._

_ "And yet, even as Dean felt the blood drain from his face, a part of him warmed slightly as he looked at the kid. A hollow inside him seemed to fill, if just for a moment. Maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if he was right and Ben was his son. Maybe it could actually be the best thing to ever—"_

"What the fuck are you reading to her?" Dean demanded.

Castiel slammed the book closed and tried to shift his body in order to sit on it, but the cast on his leg slowed him down, and Dean grabbed it from Cas's hands.

_"The Kids Are Alright,_ Cas? Really?"

"I assumed that hearing about you and Sam would comfort her," Castiel explained unapologetically. "That if she heard your names consistently, it would make it easier for her to come back."

"Oh, god, please do not tell me you've been reading her the whole _Supernatural _series."

"All right," replied Castiel, but Dean could clearly deduce that just because Castiel wasn't going to tell him, it didn't mean that wasn't the case. He rolled his eyes.

"I'm gonna kill Chuck. In fact, I'm calling him right now."

"They don't like it when you make calls in the hospital, Dean," Castiel reminded him.

Dean grumbled under his breath and shoved his phone back in his pocket. "Son of a bitch _knows_ by now that we're down a man. Woman. Well, tiny woman. The least he could do is call to throw us a fucking bone about when she's gonna wake up."

Castiel doubted that Chuck could still see the Winchesters' future now that Lucifer was back in the box, but he could see by the look on Dean's face that mentioning this would be a mistake. The hunter sat on the edge of Noelle's bed and gazed down at her ashy face with such sadness that it hurt to see. Castiel had only seen him look more upset when he knelt on the patch of dirt above Lucifer's Cage and mourned what he thought was the permanent loss of his younger brother.

Castiel now had the luxury of caring about his human family as much as his heart told him to. Without the responsibility of trying to keep Heaven from falling, the joy at having Sam back overwhelmed him. The concern and guilt and tenderness he felt for Noelle ate away at him, sent him hobbling to her room on his crutches every day before he was discharged, and now that he had been released from the hospital, he found himself asking Dean to drive him to the hospital to see her several times a day, every time visiting hours started. And that nagging and strange feeling he'd had around Dean on occasion in the past was now a constant. His heart fluttered every time Dean adjusted an article of clothing Castiel hadn't put on right. The first night after his release, Dean had gallantly insisted that he and Sam would take turns sleeping on the motel room floor, since both Cas and Sam actually slept now and Cas was injured, and he had had to physically bite his tongue to keep from suggesting he and Dean just share. Dean had kept feeding him his food until the pain in his muscles abated and he was able to feed himself, but even that chore had become less and less embarrassing and more and more enjoyable as the days passed.

And Sam kept giving him these maddeningly _knowing _looks.

"Do you think she can even hear us?" Dean asked. "Is it even worth reading to her?"

Castiel looked up at him, glad for a reprieve from his confusing (and undeniably romantic) thoughts. "I hope so. Because otherwise I've been reading myself hoarse for no reason at all."

Dean smiled a little at that. Noelle had been in a coma for over a month. The doctors had little hope, and Gabriel had not returned. Everyone's optimism was wearing thin; to be honest, Castiel was surprised they had waited this long, that they had not… well, left. But then again, Noelle would have done the same for any of them.

"I still don't appreciate you reading her my fucking life story," Dean said abruptly, switching off the softness of the moment and diving back into his usual snarky manner. "You know there's a really, _really _graphic scene of me having sex with an ex-girlfriend in one of 'em, right?"

"I skipped that scene," said Castiel. It was half-true; he had skipped it while reading aloud to Noelle, but not while reading it on his own. He had chosen to do that partly because he knew it was nothing Noelle would want to hear, partly because the nuances of human behavior were becoming clearer the longer he was immersed in them and it would have been all kinds of awkward for him as well as her, if she could hear him, and partly because he was a little ashamed of how strange it made him feel to know that Dean had slept with a girl named Cassie, called her _Cass _as they made love.

"Yeah… good." Dean was now out of things to say. It was – endearing. He could go so far as to say _cute,_ but he still didn't have a firm grasp on the more oscillary emotions, the ones that went beyond happy, sad, angry, and afraid, and wasn't sure if he was using it right… plus, he had a feeling Dean would deck him if he said it out loud.

Castiel hated this, the lulls in conversation as they both turned once more to Noelle's still form on the bed. Her eyes were underscored by darker shadows than normal, and her short hair had grown out a bit, a little shaggy. She would be annoyed when she woke up, because at least once a month, sometimes more, she had insisted on locking herself in the bathroom with a tiny pair of scissors and snipping away until she had cropped her hair into the desired style. She took an immense amount of pride in her ability to cut her own hair to form what she called a pixie cut, with strands of varying length and feathery bangs falling across her forehead – it all seemed very involved to Castiel, who could hardly shave without slitting his own throat by accident. The idea of her sitting up with her slightly longer hair frizzing about her head from being against a pillow so long and demanding a pair of scissors made him smile. He just hoped it would happen soon.

"God dammit, Noelle," Dean muttered, standing up from her bed in one irritated movement. "All we want is to breathe your fucking noxious cigarette smoke and go to Sioux Falls so we can have a break from all this shit, but we're stuck in Arizona because you'd rather sleep in. Thanks a lot."

A few months ago, Castiel would have looked at him in surprise for being so accusatory, but Dean was kidding. Kind of. It was that grim sort of kidding where everyone present knows it's not _really _funny, and if it does make you laugh, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. He was trying to goad her awake, trying and knowing he was going to fail. After a few moments, he turned away.

"Come on, you want lunch? I'm starving."

By way of responding, Castiel leaned down to the side of the chair where he'd laid his crutches and pushed himself to a standing position.

The crutches were annoying. The first couple of days, he had accidentally socked many an innocent chair, wall, or shin with the stupid metal things. One memorable morning at a diner, he had picked them up and the foam part that went under his arm had upended his unfinished soup all over the table. Dean and Sam had laughed at him for a solid few minutes, after leaving the waitress a couple of extra dollars for a tip.

Cas tossed them into the back seat of the Impala and arranged himself in the passenger seat. He was sick to death of having broken limbs. Couldn't the damn things just _heal_ already? He wasn't bruised anymore and could move without aching, and his fractured wrist had been out of its cast for a couple of days, but this stupid leg was going to be the death of him.

"So Sam and I are gonna be gone this evening," Dean said as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

"Where?" asked Castiel. "And what is it?"

"Not that far, just a couple hours. A town called Oracle – ironic, right? I don't think it's anything to get your feathers in a knot about—" Castiel had learned the art of concealing his emotions just as suddenly as he had been overcome by them, taught inadvertently by Sam and Dean, who were masters at it, and he didn't let Dean see how careless slips of the tongue like that made him wish that Raphael had just killed him "—but we might not be back until morning."

"Demonic omens?"

Dean blinked in surprise. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"When it's a haunting, you don't seem nervous at all," said Castiel. "If you think it's some kind of monster, you look almost excited, in a strange way. But with demons, you just seem unhappy."

He blinked again. "Oh. Yeah, demons suck. Anyway, you know the drill – Sam and I'll salt the doors and windows before we leave, but just double check every couple hours and make sure the lines are still intact. Also-"

"Dean," Castiel interrupted. "I know."

The boys had resumed hunting while Cas was still in the hospital. After his release, they had taken a break for a few days to get him actual clothes and try to help him adjust to life as a human _without _the immediate threat of the Apocalypse this time. It didn't last long. Once Cas learned the crucial arts of telling bald-faced lies and ordering takeout, the boys had returned to their profession, without him. Cas was fully aware that he would be of no help at all on a hunt, lurching about on his ridiculous crutches, but that didn't make waiting in the motel room for them to come back any easier. He wanted to help. He wanted to _hunt_. Despite what Dean thought about their lives, Cas knew that he would take the life of a hunter over this constant, never ending _sitting around and being utterly useless _in a heartbeat. Besides, he had already sort of done it, when the pooka in New York had carried Dean off and nearly trampled him (Dean had shot the finishing blow, but still). But until his damned leg healed, he was stuck in the motel while Sam and Dean hunted and Noelle wandered about in whatever dreamland her unconsciousness brought her.

"I know you know," admitted Dean. "Sorry. It's just – having Sam back – Noelle being all comatose – and your grace… yeah. Sorry. I'm not babying you on purpose, I'm just… anyway. Sorry."

"It's all right," said Castiel, looking out the window. "I understand."

Several minutes of slightly too-awkward driving later, Dean pulled up the Impala alongside the curb about half a block away from the diner. Much to Cas's chagrin, he retrieved his crutches from the back seat before Cas could even open his door, and together, they entered the diner. It had a curiously vintage feel to it, more reminiscent of what diners had looked like when Castiel had sent Dean back to 1973 than what they looked like now, with barstools whose shade of red bordered on alarming and lots of chrome. Everywhere Cas looked, there was chrome. The grizzled-looking host took one look at him and said, "Booth, yes?"

"Yeah, that'd be great, Gramps, thanks a lot," said Dean. The host gave them a smile, throwing a sympathetic look at Cas.

"My daughter broke leg, twenty years ago," he said as he led them to the nearest open booth. "Big cast, all the way up her leg. Could not move knee. Very annoying, yeah?"

"Very," agreed Cas, sliding into the booth with no small amount of difficulty, wondering just what kind of accent the man had. It was very interesting.

"So, what you boys eating?"

"Bacon cheeseburger deluxe, two of 'em."

"And a cup of coffee, please," added Cas.

"Make it two."

The guy smiled again and left with their orders, signaling to a man of about twenty-five who had to be his son, who was holding a metal coffee pot. The younger man grabbed a cup and small saucer from the counter, then placed it on the table in front of Castiel, who thanked him and immediately dove for the sugar, tearing open one of the packets and emptying it. He stirred briefly, then reached for another, and it wasn't until he was stirring the second sugar into his coffee that he happened to glance up at Dean and his furrowed eyebrows.

"What is it?" Cas asked, tearing open another small yellow packet.

"Just wondering, Cas… once Noelle's among the living again and you're all healed up, what's the plan?"

He looked up from his fourth packet, taking a moment to appreciate the restraint Dean was showing. Usually after the second sugar, Dean started making faces. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I get the feeling she's gonna want to stay with you," Dean explained. "I mean – okay, five is pushing it, dude – I mean, you two got that Miyagi and Daniel-san thing going on, and… I just have a gut feeling Noelle won't want to leave you."

"I don't understand what you're trying to ask me," said Cas frankly, pouring the fifth and last packet into his coffee anyway and taking a pointed sip, without looking away from Dean.

The hunter rolled his eyes. "I have to spell this out for you? Cas, without your mojo comin' back, you're stuck here, right? So you gotta have some kind of plan for the future, which you now have as a human. Basically, what I'm asking is, do you want to stay with me and Sam and become a hunter – you know, once you can move – or do you want to try and be a normal guy?"

Cas blinked, bemused. "I… didn't even realize this was something we'd need to talk about. Of course I plan on becoming a hunter. I won't be useless on Earth as well as in Heaven. Besides, I wouldn't know the first thing about living as a 'normal' person."

A grin split Dean's face. He reached across the table and clapped Cas on the shoulder. "Good, because the idea of you getting a desk job is freakin' hilarious."

"Your faith in me is touching," Cas grumbled, as the waiter came back and put their plates in front of them. "Thank you."

"Anything else, you let me know," the old man replied jovially, before bustling off to seat a young couple and their two kids.

Dean dug into his cheeseburger with enthusiasm, pausing only to comment, "I hate when it's some old gray guy and not a hot chick," before resuming. Cas ate more slowly, having learned quite early on that without a Horseman affecting his appetite and his grace allowing him to eat as much food as he wanted, he tended to fill up rather quickly. He glanced up, past Dean's head; the family of four had been placed in the booth in front of him, and their little daughter was standing up in her seat, which shared a back with Dean's. She appeared intent on placing a straw wrapper on Dean's head without him noticing. Catching Cas's eye, she smiled with mischeif sparkling out of her eyes and put a finger to her lips. Cas smiled back, unable to help it.

"What are you grinning about over there?" Dean asked through a mouthful of cheese and beef.

"Nothing," replied Cas soberly. Wrapper successfully planted on the crown of Dean's skull, the little girl gave herself a silent round of applause and blew Cas a kiss before sitting down. She was fair-skinned and blonde-haired, and reminded him very much of Claire Novak, if Claire were a few years younger. He had occupied her body for minutes only, but that girl had fire within her, strength that surpassed even Jimmy's by miles and determination to rival John Winchester's. Castiel wished for a moment he could find Claire and Amerlia, just to let them know that Jimmy suffered no longer, that his soul had remained in Heaven when his body was cast from it. But Claire was a smart girl, and if Amelia hadn't thought to do it herself (though she seemed quite capable), Claire had certainly convinced her by now to change their surname and go into hiding. Perhaps they were using a name Jimmy would know, hoping someday he would find them, once the danger had passed. Castiel didn't want to confirm their worst fear, didn't want to tell them that the only time they would see him again would be when they, themselves, arrived in Heaven, but was false hope better than no hope at all? He wasn't sure.

"_Cas,"_ said Dean firmly, snapping him out of his musings. "You with me over there?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. When you and Sam go on your hunt, try to be back early tomorrow? I'd like to be able to visit Noelle."

"Well, you know how much Sammy and I love palling around with demons," said Dean with a grimace, "but for you, we'll cut the fun short. You're welcome."

Cas grinned at this and returned to his cheeseburger. They ate the remainder of the meal in a comfortable silence, the car ride on the way there all but forgotten. Dean had been doing this a lot lately – alternating between acting compulsively overprotective and smilingly refusing to acknowledge the fact that anything was wrong with anyone. Cas couldn't tell where Dean's mind was, but his own returned to Claire and Amelia Novak, lingering for a few sad and concerned minutes before switching over to Noelle. He wondered why his feeling towards Claire overlapped as much as they did with what he felt towards Noelle, when the two situations could not be more different – when the two _girls _could not be more different.

Dean's expression was peculiar when Cas posed the question to him. "How exactly do you mean?" he asked. The straw wrapper from the little girl was still on his head, swaying comically with every move.

Cas shifted in his seat, his cast feeling huge and clumsy under the table. "It's difficult to explain. When Noelle showed up after that vampire attacked her, I felt… rage. I felt guilt. I felt that I'd failed her by not protecting her, even though I knew that there was nothing I could have done. She just ran off. And sometimes, when I think of Claire, it feels similar. As if I am failing her simply… existing. Not going to her. But I don't know why."

"_God,_ you're worse than Sam with the fucking chick flick scenes, Cusack. Remind me to buy you a boom box so you can blast Peter Gabriel outside her window."

"What?"

"Look, sometimes you feel whatever Novak left behind, right? Famine affected him, not you, right?"

"Yes," said Cas, "but Jimmy was still alive when we encountered Famine. He was still in this body."

"Yeah, but sharing a head with a guy for, what was it, four years, three? That's gotta have some lasting effect, Cas. So, Claire is Novak's daughter, so what you feel towards her is carryover from him. And the reason you feel the same way about Noelle is cus you're a big ol' softie."

This didn't make sense to him. "So, you're saying that because of Jimmy missing his daughter, I'm using Noelle to fill the space she left?"

"No, moron, I'm saying that you love Noelle on your own. You just _recognize _Novak's love for Claire for what it is, because you already feel it towards our own personal Eve."

Cas could not compose a response for that any more eloquent than, "Oh."

Dean smiled. "See what I mean, though? You and Noelle, I don't know what it is about you guys, but the two of you have a pretty heavy-duty connection. Or something. S'why I asked if you wanted to stick around or beat it. She doesn't need us protecting her anymore, and I know she'll want to stay with you."

"But what about you? What about Sam?"

"What about us, we'll be fine."

"I have no doubt that you'll be fine," said Castiel impatiently. "But I don't want to leave. Noelle won't either, I know it. Even I can tell that she loves you too, Dean. And besides, we're family, aren't we?"

As soon as he had spoken, Castiel wondered if he had overstepped his boundaries, if he shouldn't have remained quiet. Dean's face was unreadable for about three endless seconds, before relaxing into a contendedness that looked deeper than joy. He just looked… happy. It was nice to see.

"Yeah," he replied. "We are."

Cas nearly sighed in relief, feeling once again as if he were part of something. Angels weren't designed to stand alone, and even now, Castiel was no different, but who he was standing with made all the difference in the world. He did not stay because of blind faith, or because of fear of punishment, but because he wanted to. And they wanted him.

Dean cleared his throat loudly, clearly having had enough. The wrapper fell to the side, unnoticed. "Okay, no more mushy-gooshy bullshit. Let's get out of here, Sam's probably ready to kill me. He wanted to be on the road fifteen minutes ago."

#

_Wendigo_

_Creature, corporeal, human in origin. Born after consumption of too much human flesh – cannibal turned monster. _

_Dwells in caves, abandoned mine shafts, prefers to be underground, most commonly found in areas settled by pioneers/Native Americans, though not exclusive. Hoards victims, do not presume dead, search&rescue 1st priority. Hibernation cycle 23 yrs (+/-). Super fast, super strong, intelligent, can imitate human voice, nasty sons of bitches._

_Fire __**ONLY**_ _weakness – burn it alive_

Castiel rubbed his eyes wearily, wondering whether or not John Winchester had learned penmanship from a gorilla. The man's handwriting was worse than Noelle's, for crying out loud, and her hands trembled like tree branches in a strong wind. He turned the page to read about chupacabras, but his phone rang, sparing his eyesight for as long as the conversation lasted. Cas stood up from the table and hobbled over to his bed, praying absently that it was the hospital calling to tell him that Noelle was all right. But it was Bobby's name on the caller ID.

"Hello, Bobby."

"Hello yourself, are the other two idjits there?"

"No," Cas replied, maneuvering himself back over to the table. "Why?"

"Because they're not answering their phones, that's why," said the old man gruffly. "You heard from them recently?"

"No, not since they left." Cas glanced at the clock. It was a little past midnight – later than he'd thought. "Maybe they decided to spend the night in Oracle. They could be asleep."

Bobby's tone informed him that he did not agree. "Yeah, maybe. Anyway, when they get back, call me. I got something to tell you three for when the kid wakes up."

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you when the boys get back. So how's the leg?"

"It's fine. Thank you for asking." Castiel had not physically seen Bobby since just after Sam jumped into Hell, but with the use of his own legs and the ownership of his own soul, Bobby seemed a bit more sumpathetic to the former angel's plight than he had been previously (although Castiel's resurrecting him from the dead probably had something to do with it as well). He knew that Noelle had met Bobby a few times, but events had always played out so that every time the boys took Noelle to Bobby's, Castiel was in Heaven. Their visits had been brief and hurried each time, but Dean kept talking about how the four of them were going to spend some time at Bobby's and defragment after all that had happened. Cas was actually looking forward to seeing Bobby again.

"Good. Don't forget to call me, it's important."

"I won't," said Cas, knowing that it would do no good to try and prod Bobby into telling him what "it" was. But he was very curious about it. "Goodnight, Bobby."

"'Night, kid."

He snapped his phone shut, marveling at Bobby's insistence on calling him "kid," and returned to John's journal and his lukewarm beer, not too much troubled about the fact that the boys hadn't answered their phones. Maybe they really were asleep. Maybe they were in the middle of an exorcism. There were plenty of logical explanations, and none of them involved anyone getting seriously injured, except the demon in question. Cas was worried, sure, but not very much. Sam and Dean would be fine. He was more interested in whatever it was Bobby had to tell them. But really, he should be paying more attention to what he was reading, and with great effort, turned his head back to John's journal.

He made it through chupacabras, wraiths, and homonculi before giving up; John's writing was beginning to give him a headache, not to mention the constant flipping from where the man had made new discoveries on this version of monster or that, and stuck some manner of Post-It note scrawled with instructions to turn to a later page. Marking his place with a scrap of motel stationary, which would certainly be lost among the numerous other scraps of stationary from other motels, Cas placed the book to the side and leaned his head back, wishing for something to do other than _bitch._ Sure, it was mental bitching, but it was bitching nonetheless. He was beginning to annoy even himself with the constant stream of insecurity and self-loathing and feeling of worthlessness, and Jesus Christ, did Dean _really _feel like this all the time?

Castiel used to think that he empathized with Dean because he could see into the man's heart, could see every inch of the worthless, pathetic being Dean thought he was. Seeing and feeling were not one and the same, though as an angel, he had had no way of knowing that. But he had come to realize over the past month that whatever he'd thought Dean put himself through was nothing – truly nothing – compared to how this actually felt. He wondered how Dean had withstood it for more than thirty years, but the answer came swiftly enough: Sam. Dean had dealt with the hatred he felt towards himself because he had Sam to look after and protect and love, no matter how turbulent their relationship became. Castiel wasn't sure whether he had the equivalent of a Sam in his life. Of course, he considered Sam himself a friend. He knew beyond a doubt that he would sacrifice his life for Noelle's sake without a second's hesitation, if circumstances ever arose where that became necessary. And he was becoming more and more certain with every passing day that what he felt towards Dean bypassed friendship and moved into the sort of love Jimmy had for Amelia. It was fitting; Dean was the one who had taught him friendship in the first place. But did any of them make the agony he felt within his own mind worthwhile?

He was a little ashamed of himself for even wondering. Of course they did. With his soul back in place, Sam was once again the man whose considerable amount of darkness couldn't drown out his light. Noelle had thrown herself headfirst into the life of a hunter, sacrificed all she had known without complaint, put everything she had into training, and nearly died saving Castiel's own diminished life. And Dean… after everything that Heaven and Hell and his father and his brother and his own crazy head had put him through, Dean deserved more than even God could give him.

_Not a lot of action (or Sam… sorry, Sasquatch), but some character and relationship development. Things should pick up in the action department soon._

_Also, as the lovely and thoughtful DemonUntilDeath pointed out, I realize that Dean's rushing in to get Death to go get Sam's soul was a little rushed. I should have paced that better, but there is a scene in a couple of chapters where it is explained just what was going through his damaged little head when he did the deet. Thanks for reading._


	13. You're No Jake Gyllenhaal, But…

Author's notes: Please enjoy.

**You're No Jake Gyllenhaal, But…**

Cas decided that he should stop drinking before bed, period. End of story. Sure, it was virtually impossible for him to sleep without alcohol these past couple of weeks (now that he actually required sleep), but it gave him extremely strange dreams. The most common dream, a nightmare of varying degrees of unpleasantness about Raphael seizing him by the hair and throwing him into the bowels of Hell, was one thing: this, he felt, was a semi-valid concern. The dream about Dean slipping into bed with him and murmuring under his breath that Sam was somewhere else, for some reason, was… nice. He liked having that one. The one where Noelle lounged on the roof of a rusted fighter jet in Bobby's junkyard, smoking a cigarette on a holder that was longer than her arm and demanding to know when Castiel had become so short was odd, but nothing he couldn't handle. In fact, he was led to believe that all three of these dreams could all be considered fairly normal, by human standards. But Sam being half-dragged, half-carried through the door of their motel room by a dishevelled Fran Fine, plotzing about demons and concussions and _would you wayke up, Cyyeas?_ was a little too much. For one thing, Fran was about the size of one of Sam's arms, so the notion of her supporting any amount of his weight was downright laughable. _Oh Mista Sheffyeild, Syeammy's getting blood all over your sofa!_

"CAS!"

Castiel jumped, his eyes opening. It was not Fran Fine manhandling Sam through the door, but Dean; he had fallen asleep to _The Nanny_ reruns and apparently the TV was louder than he'd thought.

But that really wasn't important right now, because Sam really was being hauled into the room, and he looked like he had been dragged through Hell.

"What happened?" Cas asked blearily, rushing over to the brothers and grabbing Sam's other arm to keep him steady.

"Looks worse than it is," Sam insisted, though he was leaning quite heavily on Dean. "I could use the other half of that Knob Creek, though."

Dean glanced over to the largely depleted fifth of whiskey and gave Cas an exasperated look. "Come on, it wasn't anywhere near that empty when we left."

"I can't sleep," muttered Cas, retrieving it for Sam. "What happened?" he repeated, as Dean helped lower his brother into a sitting position on the bed nearest the door.

Grimacing, Sam gestured towards his left arm, which was wrapped with a bloodstained swatch that looked like it had been torn from someone's shirt. As Cas looked closer, it became clear very fast that the cloth wasn't stained with blood, but drenched with it. Sam's breathing was harsh and pained, but Cas had seen him in worse states. "Possessed by Lucifer" pretty much trumped "knocked around a little." He glanced up at Dean, who was rifling through a duffel bag, just in time to catch the first-aid kit that Dean threw at him over Sam's shoulder.

"Here. First you take the rubbing alcohol and clean the wound, cus getting infected is a bitch, then thread the needle – easier than it sounds – and—"

"Wait, wait," Cas interrupted. "What?"

"Thing busted my fingers," said Dean, holding up his hand. Four of the fingers were swollen purple and black. "Should heal up fine, but I don't think I'll be able to stitch him up."

"This is a terrible idea," said Castiel flatly.

"Look, I'm really not into it either, Cas," Sam interrupted, "but I'd rather you practice on me than lose much more blood, you know?"

He did look a bit pale. Cas glanced over at Dean, wishing he could just touch them both on the forehead and none of this would be a problem, but Dean just gave him an expectant look. Cas bit his lip and opened the case, withdrawing the needle and thread.

All told, it went better than he had expected. Sam slugged down more whiskey than even Cas thought was advisable, and more than once he had grunted and shuddered in pain, but with Dean giving Cas step-by-step instructions, the gash on Sam's arm was soon sewn up properly. The younger hunter poked at it gingerly, looking just as surprised as Cas himself at the neatness of the stitches.

"Wow," he said. "Good job. Thanks, Cas."

"You're welcome," Cas replied. Dean reached over with his good hand and shook his shoulder affectionately. Even more so than his success at not completely butchering Sam's arm, that made him smile. Until he remembered the fact that Dean's other hand looked like it had been run over with a car. He stood up to get some ice. "So, really, what happened?" he asked, wrapping a couple of ice cubes from the small freezer in a paper towel and passing it off to Dean.

He took it with a grateful look and pressed it with a hiss to his blackened hand. "Fucking demons."

"Not literally, I hope." Both brothers stared at him. Cas glanced defensively from one to the other. "What?"

"Dude," said Dean. "You just said something funny. Intentionally."

Cas nodded slowly, feeling extremely out of the loop at their apparent wonder. As well as he knew them, the Winchesters were still really weird to him sometimes. He sat cross-legged on the other bed, his hands where his shins met, and repeated, "What happened?"

"Right. Demons. So we get to Oracle, and the fuckin' things seek _us _out instead of us tracking them to Hell and back-"

"Pun intended?" quipped Sam.

"Absolutely," Dean shot back without missing a beat. "So we're barely getting settled in the room, Sam's doing his nerd thing, and bang, we got a room full of demons."

"But why?" Cas asked, frowning. "Why lure you to Oracle when they could have just come here?"

"Would you shut up and let me finish?" Dean's good mood seemed to dissipate a bit. "They weren't luring usanywhere. They were conducting some kind of ritual."

"But since they got the jump on us before we could even pour the salt lines, we never found out what that ritual was," clarified Sam. "But something is going down, and it's a big deal."

"And guess who's smack dab in the middle of it."

"You two?" said Cas, though as soon as he'd spoken, he realized it was a rhetorical question.

But Dean replied nonetheless. "Yeah. Sons of bitches could have killed us easy, they took us by surprise. But they just dropped cryptic hints at us, threw Sam into a mirror, broke my fingers like a kid with a friggin' glowstick, and amscrayed."

"Cryptic hints," repeated Cas.

"They said… something like, 'cat's in the cradle, family man,'" recalled Sam.

"Well… that means nothing to me."

"It was just demons being douchebags," said Dean firmly. "But whatever that ritual was, it's big."

"Do you think it has anything to do with whatever was happening in New Haven?" asked Cas. "When we first took in Noelle?" His use of the word "we" when referring to the three of them was effortless by now.

"Oh, that seven disappearences in seven days thing?" Dean shrugged. "It could be. We never did crack that one."

"So, did you stop the ritual?"

He was met with a devilish grin. "Aw, Cas wants to know if we stopped the ritual."

"We killed about half of the demons with Ruby's knife," Sam explained, shooting his brother a look that Dean called his bitchface. "We definitely threw a wrench in their plan."

"Well… good," said Cas, noting Sam's slightly unfocused eyes for the first time, and the way his head kept listing forward. "You look like you lost a lot of blood. You should rest."

Sam rubbed his eyes with one hand. "I'm fine."

"Cas is right." Dean stood up from the bed where he was sitting beside Sam, stretching. His shirt rode up a little, shorter where he had torn off a swatch of it to bind Sam's arm, exposing his skin beneath. Castiel turned away to avoid staring. "I dunno about you, Sammy, but I'm beat."

Sam did not look convinced. He glanced at Cas, who knew exactly what the taller man was thinking. Dean hadn't been sleeping at all lately. Cas would have liked to think that it was simply because he insisted on sleeping on the floor, but he was not quite as good at lying to himself as he once was, and couldn't make the lie stick in his head as truth.

Nonetheless, within an hour, Sam was passed out in his bed. He had knocked back the equivalent of about six or seven shots while Cas was stiching him up, so that probably played a part, but Dean was lying on the floor with a pillow stuffed behind his head, wide awake. Cas knew this because he was wide awake as well; he could never fall back asleep once he had been roused. Though tonight, he was in rather better spirits than usual. Sewing his friend back together without completely screwing it up and causing further injury played a large role in that particular fact.

"Dude, I can't believe you were watching _The Nanny,_" came Dean's tired voice from somewhere around the foot of Cas's bed. Cas grinned into the pillow at his fondly mocking tone.

"It was on."

"Yeah, I'll bet. I don't have to put up with you doing Fran Drescher impressions now, do I?"

"I doubt I could make my voice that nasal if I tried," replied Cas seriously. "Or that high-pitched."

Dean laughed. "_Your _voice? It would probably make your head explode. And ruin your gravelly sex appeal."

"Oh, my sex appeal?"

"Yeah, chicks dig the gruff thing you got going on."

"Is that why you constantly make your voice lower?"

Dean sat up, his head popping up from the bed into Castiel's line of view. "I do not. This is all Dean."

"Oh. My mistake."

But Dean could still read the small smile playing about Cas's mouth, which he didn't try to hide, because – why _bother?_ He was in a good mood for once. "You're still a holy dick, Cas."

Cas did what anyone would do and threw his extra pillow at Dean.

#

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because Cas woke up to a splash of icy water on his face. He sat up with a sputter, shaking droplets free of his unruly hair, wondering in the slightly drunk state of being half awake and half asleep why it was raining inside. But when he saw Dean laughing and placing a cup on the table before digging into their bag of weapons, it clicked in his mind and he glared.

"That wasn't funny."

"Karma's a bitch."

"You're so mature, Dean," said Sam through a long yawn. He was tucking the Impala's keys in his pocket. Cas considered asking him if he should be driving after getting his arm sewn up less than eight hours ago, but decided against it. "Cas, what size coff—"

"The largest they have," Cas replied immediately. Sam nodded – this was nothing new – and left, shutting the door behind him. Cas was getting to know this motel room far better than he cared to. He could tell whether it was going to rain or not just by the sound the door made when it closed. On dry days like that day, it was a loud slam, no matter how gently someone tried to close it, but on humid days, it was a struggle just to get the damn thing shut.

"You might want to cut down, you've been human for like a month and already you can't function without caffeine," Dean commented.

"I can," disagreed Cas truthfully, standing up from the bed and carelessly tossing the covers back over the pillow. "I just prefer not to."

"Right." Dean sat on Cas's bed, dragging their weapons with him, and held up his ivory-handled gun. "Siddown, grasshopper."

Cas sat beside him. "Why are you calling me grasshopper?"

"Nevermind. Here, take it." Dean handed him the gun. "Should have done this awhile ago, but I figured you'd want to learn how to be a person first."

"Thank you?" replied Cas uncertainly.

"No problem. So, all right, here's the thing – I started Noelle out on the Glock because it has more rounds and she's a terrible shot, but from what Sammy and Bobby told me after Pestilence, you're all right with a gun."

"If by 'all right,' you mean 'capable of shooting a Croatoan victim at point-blank range,' then yes, I am."

"It's a start. At any rate, I'm going to teach you how to take care of the thing first, then when you can walk without the crutches we'll give you some target practice." Dean angled his body so that he was turned slightly, facing Cas. "Okay, before you do anything, you want to make sure it's not loaded, because no hunter wants to be remembered as the guy who shot himself cleaning his gun."

"So, the first thing you do is remove the magazine," guessed Cas.

Dean looked impressed. "Not bad, Agent Zero. Okay, then what?"

"Then… I assume I'd need a brush of some kind?"

"Not just yet. First you want to double check to make sure there's no rounds in the chamber, I'm not kidding about the whole shooting yourself by accident thing. Now before you clean the actual gun, you want to clean the mag, so you take this brush…"

Dean walked him through the process of cleaning and oiling the gun, which he explained was a Colt 1911 (ending up in a long-winded lecture about how, no, _The Colt _was one Colt gun among many, a Colt Patterson, in fact, and it was the only Colt that could kill supernatural creatures). Once Csa had a basic understanding of how a gun worked, it wasn't hard to dissemble and reassemble it without Dean guiding him through it. He liked holding the gun. Why Noelle had always fidgeted and twitched when she had to carry one was completely beyond Cas, to whom the weapon felt like a small restoration of power. Even lurching about on his crutches, he was not completely helpless if he was armed. He'd felt downgraded the last time he'd carried a gun, and – he decided to be honest with himself – he _was _downgraded. But this time, he would take what he could get.

"Dean," he said, after demonstrating for the second time that he could load and unload the gun without missing a beat, "I would like to go shooting."

"Not a great idea."

"I can stand without the crutches, I just can't walk."

"It's more of a balance thing. Without both legs, the recoil could bring you down." Dean's mouth twisted a little in sympathy. "I'm sorry, dude. We'll go the day you get the cast off, all right? I promise." His green eyes met Castiel's.

Cas nodded, swallowing. Did he even _know_ Sam's eye color? If he did, he didn't much care, because looking into Sam's eyes and looking into Dean's had never felt the same. Especially not now. "All right."

"I think you should carry one, though," Dean said.

Cas felt himself smiling grimly. "I see. You're babying me again."

"Am not."

"Then tell me this wasn't brought on by what happened in Oracle."

He met Dean's eyes again, with resolve this time. It was Dean who looked away. "They got us in the motel, Cas," he muttered, and Cas understood. To Dean, the only way the attack could have been more intrusive would have been if the demons had ambushed them in the Impala. Perhaps in Bobby's house.

"You're quite vigilant about making sure I'm surrounded by salt lines," Cas reminded him. "Practically at all times. It's a little annoying, in fact." He was hoping Dean would crack a smile at that, but there was nothing. In the back of his mind, the part that still regarded everything through the lens of his angelic past, Cas wondered why Dean always tried to use humor to lighten someone else's mood, when such a tactic didn't even work on him. "Besides," he added, "if a demon did get into this room, a gun would just make it laugh."

"Would you just humor me, Cas?" Dean snapped. "Please?"

"I'm not saying I don't want the gun," he replied, unperturbed. "I want the gun. A lot. But I'd also like to know what's really wrong. It's not just Oracle, is it?"

"Sure it is."

"No, it's not. Why won't you tell me?"

"When the hell'd you turn into my wife?" Dean demanded irritably, his cheeks flushing a little with sudden anger. At least, Cas thought it was anger.

"I just want to know why you suddenly feel that I need to carry a gun when you haven't so much as mentioned it since I woke up. That's all."

"Because – Jesus Christ. Because after you got thrown out of the fucking _clouds,_ I was so busy thinking 'I can't believe the lucky sonofabitch made it' that it didn't occur to me something as common as a demon would show up, okay?" Dean shook his head. "Dude, you have no idea the shape you were in. Noelle – when we first got you guys to the hospital, no one had any idea that she'd be out for a month. Yeah, the wings freaked us out, but she had a broken wrist and that was pretty much it, everyone thought she'd be fine. But there were a solid eighteen hours or so when we weren't sure if you were going to _live."_

Cas fought the urge to grimace. Hearing this made him feel so breakable – fragile. He tried not to show his discomfort as he replied, "But that doesn't explain—"

"I don't want to lose you again, dumbass," Dean muttered. "We!" he tacked on quickly. "_We _don't want to lose you again, I mean, do you even know how many times we've thought you were dead? It's getting really goddamn old. Not to mention the fact that Noelle would hand me my _ass _if I let you die on me, so—"

"Dean, for God's sake, shut up." Cas pressed his lips against Dean's. They opened immediately, probably from surprise, and Cas took that opportunity to plunge his tongue past them. Dean tasted like morning breath, a bit unpleasant – nothing like the "rich, spicy flavor" Chuck had described. Maybe he was doing it wrong.

After a few stunned seconds, Dean withdrew, his eyebrows raised as high as they went. "Where the hell did that come from?"

"I learned it from the pizza man."

"From the… dude, have you been watching my porn?"

Cas bristled. "I get bored when you and Sam leave."

Shaking his head slightly, Dean laughed a little. "You're such a freak."

"Yes, I'm pretty sure my position is unique. I've never heard of another angel being forcibly evicted from heaven and going on to kiss Michael's true vessel."

"Ooh, I like it when you talk dirty." Dean shot him a grin. Cas grinned back, feeling a bit giddy. What he wanted to say next might jinx his good fortune, but it was so _weird _that he had to bring it up.

"You seem oddly all right with this," he said.

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?"

"Because you're not all right with anything? Ever?"

Dean rolled his eyes, throwing an arm around Cas's shoulders. "Let's just say I was forewarned."

"I'm sorry?"

"Zachariah fucked me around two years ago, and I got to meet the Chuck from 2014. So right before he advised me to buy as much toilet paper as I could fit in the Impala, he asked if you and I were 'still together.' I don't think he meant to tell me if I didn't know, but there aren't really a lot of ways you can cover that up."

Cas crinkled his brow, surprised (to say the very least) by this new information. "What?"

"Yeah, apparently in that version of the future – the future that would've happened if I didn't call start hunting with Sam again – apparently I turned into a dick and we both ended up manwhores, but after you lost your mojo, we had a thing. Or something."

"And… you didn't think this was something of which I should be made aware," Cas clarified.

"When was I supposed to bring it up?" Dean asked. "When we were prepping Sam for his role in _Drag Me to Hell? _When you got your juice back and became God's bitch again? Or when you were recovering from getting tossed out of Heaven? 'Hey Cas, how's the leg, how's the whole "no grace" thing going, by the way, I never told you about this funny thing that happened—'"

"Right, okay," Cas interrupted. "I'm sorry. That makes sense. You're right."

Dean sighed. "Also, it's not exactly… I'm not really gay, either. I'm not into dudes."

"Technically, I don't have a gender," said Cas. "Jimmy is a man—"

"Please, _please _don't bring up Novak when we're having this conversation—"

"—but angels are neither male nor female. We adopt your pronouns to make communication with humans easier."

"Right. Yeah. I know you're just in a dude's body, that's the only reason I'm a little bit okay with this."

"Oh." Cas couldn't help but feel hurt, but Dean noticed immediately.

"No, that's not what I mean. If you'd come down in a chick vessel, I would have jumped your bones a _long _time ago. Like, before Uriel bit it. Although I think he may have killed me to defend your honor or something."

He was pretty sure that to most people, this wouldn't have been a much better response, but then again, it _was _Dean he was talking to. He counted himself lucky that a discussion about their feelings had even lasted this long. Dean seemed to read his mind, because he cleared his throat loudly.

"So, do you want to sit here like a deleted scene from _Brokeback Mountain,_ or do you want me to start getting used to making out with a dude?"

"You ask stupid questions," replied Cas, climbing onto his lap.

Dean immediately took charge, probably to keep a sense of familiarity with the whole situation, which even Cas could see was odd. He braced his hands firmly on Cas's hips and kissed him more forcefully than the woman named Chastity in the brothel had, a fact that made Cas almost uncomfortably hard. Dean rolled them over, pressing Cas into the mattress and pulling at the hem of his gray T-shirt.

Cas would never be sure if Dean had planned on telling Sam or keeping it a secret, or even if he had thought that far ahead. Either way, it ceased to be a problem before it even became one; the door opened exactly at that moment.

"Oh – oh god."

By this time, Cas's heather-gray T-shirt had been rucked halfway up his chest. He was lying on his back with Dean on top of him, one large hand splayed on Cas's slightly overheated stomach. Dean hardly looked up. "Hey, Sammy, don't drop the coffee."

"No, I actually think I'm going to throw it in my _eyes."_

"Not mine, please," said Cas, his own eyes snapping open, bypassing Sam's slack-jawed expression and zeroing in on the tray in his hands. He pushed at Dean's shoulders to get him to shift, so Cas could stand up. He strode calmly to Sam and relieved him of the cardboard tray.

"Dude," said Dean. His voice sounded floored. "I just got cockblocked by a cup of coffee."

"Okay, I never need to hear the word 'cockblocked' when you're talking about Cas," said Sam weakly.

Coffee in hand (Cas preferred when Dean went out to get the coffee in the morning, as Sam never put enough sugar in it), Cas sat at the table and sipped its scalding contents, feeling more awake already.

"You're not gonna make this more awkward than it has to be, are you?" Dean squinted at his brother.

Sam stared in response. "Um, don't you think a 'by the way, Sam' would have made it _infinitely _less awkward than _me walking in on you guys?"_

"Look, Sam, I'm no happier about it than you are, I've been seriously blueballed and he's more interested in his coffee."

Cas didn't understand what Dean meant, or why Sam miserably covered his face with his hands, but he didn't much care. The prospect of living the rest of his considerably shorter life as a human didn't seem quite as unbearable as it had that morning, when he'd woken up to a glass full of ice water being poured on his head.

_I hope this was believable for you guys. I took some liberties with the season five episode "The End," but the mental image I have of Chuck bumbling over accidentally revealing Dean and Cas's relationship made me chuckle too much not to mention it. Also, it's pretty safe to say that we are not in Kansas anymore after last week's episode. I feel like I should have waited to write this fic until season six ended, but oh well._


	14. I'm Only Sleeping

_Author's notes:__ And here we find out Noelle's mystery man. I'm sure it's a surprise to no one. Also,_ _holy shit, do I wish I had waited until season six ended to start this. It would be a completely different story, but GOD DAMN would it be more awesome. Sigh. I guess it goes without saying that for the purpose of this story, Cas and Crowley never became BFFs._

**Chapter Fourteen**

For a long time, she just drifted. Words came to her in foggy, meaningless scraps, and there was not enough of her to recognize. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she was probably a sentient being… something about cogito ergo sum. Or… something. Thoughts wouldn't stay together long enough for her to read them, words wouldn't come in the right order, images were disjoint and strange. There were faces sometimes, faces that she didn't recognize, but didn't not recognize either. They just were. She was too, or used to be.

Yes, she used to be. Of that, she was almost certain. But what did she used to be, or… who? When, even? She might have been drifting for years, or only seconds. It certainly felt like years. But she could not pull enough of herself together to be able to tell.

Then there was someone else inside wherever she was, not outside like those others, those faces, those not-faces. She must have drifted for centuries until suddenly there was another. This other felt like her, but _big,_ so much bigger, so big that it filled up everything and she didn't think she existed anymore. Words came that she could understand: "You are lucky it is only scattered, and not destroyed."

It was another few centuries before she realized those words were directed at her, and she was Noelle.

"There. That must feel better."

The voice fell just shy of being monotone, though Noelle did not hear it so much as percieve it. With that perception, she found she could percieve other things as well.

Sunlight fell on her tanned shoulders, and her cotton beach cover-up swirled around her legs in a hot, gentle wind. The blacktop underfoot was baking in the sun, heat seeping up through her plastic flip-flops. Her skin was a little clammy with sweat, her shoulder-length hair sticking to the back of her neck. Noelle raised a hand to pull it away from her skin, but froze with her hand halfway to her shoulder like a fool. Her hair had not been this long since she was fifteen.

Noelle looked around. She stood in front of a huge, twisting roller coaster that disappeared in the glare of the sun against the soft blue sky as she looked up to see its highest point. Something was wrong. Everything seemed bleached a couple of shades lighter than normal, and colors didn't stay within their lines, like she was standing in an overexposed photo. Where there should have been laughing children and haggard, overheated parents, there was silence and emptiness, until Noelle caught sight of a bench a few dozen feet away from the roller coaster. Someone was sitting on it.

As Noelle drew closer, she saw that it was a young girl of about twelve or thirteen. She had long, slightly wild blonde hair, haphazardly streaked with cotton-candy pink. It seemed incongruent with the rest of her outfit, which consisted of high black boots (_In this fucking heat? _Noelle marveled), a short, multicolored skirt, and a little denim jacket open over a black shirt. A large, tacky silver crucifix glittered at her thin chest.

The girl was looking at Noelle with solemn honey-colored eyes, seated at the edge of the bench to allow plenty of room for Noelle to sit. At a gesture from the girl, Noelle did, waiting for her to speak first.

Another hot wind stirred one of the small trees planted in artificial gardens before she actually did.

"Your brother brought you here," she said. "Your parents had promised to take you and your brother to Hershey Park, but they died before you could go. You went that summer to honor their memories. You loved them, but you had had a feeling it would be your brother taking you on vacation whether or not your parents were alive."

"Who are you?" Noelle asked.

"You bought a package of Reese's Cups every day because they were your mother's favorite and on the ride home, you and your brother stopped at a rest stop and you gave all of them to other patrons. You spent the rest of the summer feeling embarrassed about it and that was when you started hardening your heart, Noelle."

"Who are you?" Noelle repeated, louder this time.

The girl sighed softly, gazing wistfully across the blacktop. "I am Muriel."

"Muriel… I… know that name."

"Think, Noelle." Muriel tucked one pink lock behind her ear. "Realize who you are, and what you are doing here. Tell me the first thing you remember."

"I… wind," said Noelle, frowning. "Lots of wind."

Muriel surveyed her for a few seconds, head inclined slightly towards her, as if proximity could better attune her to Noelle's mind, which was at a loss. "Perhaps… hm. This is my mistake. I must have contacted you too soon."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your soul must not be fully recovered."

"My… huh?"

"Listen to me, Noelle," said Muriel, lowering her voice only to increase the intensity. Unsure what else Muriel thought she was going to do, Noelle listened. "This may actually be better. If it comes from your subconscious and not me."

"Look, kid," said Noelle, "you're really cute and everything, but I have _no _idea what you're talking about and you're kind of creepy, so why don't you go back to Claire's and I'll try and figure out what the hell's going on."

Muriel's eyes flicked onto Noelle's and she immediately regretted speaking at all. "I am the one who gathered the pieces of your soul and glued them back together," she said. There was little inflection and virtually no volume, and Noelle still shivered. "I am the one who collected the tiny smear that is your grace and replaced it with the rest of you. I fit you together like a puzzle, and I can take you apart at any time. I would advise you to show me the respect I am due… kid."

"Right…" Noelle bit her lip. None of this made sense – yet all of it did. She could not come up with any sort of rational explanation, but the answer was floating around somewhere. If she could catch it, she would know what Muriel meant.

Muriel's face softened. "Thank you. I realize this must be disorienting for you, Noelle. Piecing together a soul is no small task, for the one fixing it or the soul's owner. You will not wake up until it is completely healed, so don't worry."

"Wake up?"

"You are in a coma, Noelle."

"Oh." That made much more sense than whatever half-baked explanations had chased each other through her head, nipping each other's tails and merging together and confusing her more than she already was confused. "Okay… and you're…"

"I am an angel."

This information came as no surprise, but Noelle had no idea why. "Okay."

Muriel stood up, smoothing her little skirt. Neither a thirteen-year-old girl nor an angel had any business wearing a skirt that short with boots that almost reached her knees, but she didn't seem to notice. She held out one small hand. "Come, I have something to show you. It will help you when you wake up." Noelle's hesitation made Muriel frown slightly. "What's wrong?"

"I have this… sinking feeling," Noelle said. "I feel like people are hurt, I feel like… I'm… needed somewhere else."

"Put it from your mind," said Muriel firmly. "Everything will be all right. What I am about to show you is important, Noelle. Please, come."

Noelle stood slowly, and the young girl reached up to press two cool fingertips to her forehead. She gasped as the temperature shot down twenty degrees, one hundred to eighty, but the suddenness of the shift made it seem like she had been plunged into a snowstorm. Noelle opened her eyes, glancing around their new surroundings. She felt like she had been zapped places before.

Noelle stood slowly, and the young girl reached up to press two cool fingertips to her forehead. She gasped as the temperature shot down twenty degrees, one hundred to eighty, but the suddenness of the shift made it seem like she had been plunged into a snowstorm. Noelle opened her eyes, glancing around their new surroundings. She felt like she had been zapped places before.

She and Muriel now stood in a small bedroom tucked right up beneath a slanted roof, making the ceiling uncannily high where the door was and awkwardly low at the window. Paul McCartney's voice crooned quietly from an iHome someone had tucked against the wall, in front of a vent, singing "I Will." An old hardwood floor creaked beneath their feet, and through the open window, Noelle saw that it was pitch-black outside. She looked around the room, trying to decipher the personality of whoever it belonged to. There were no posters of any kind on the walls, but someone had set up a MacBook on the desk, bed was unmade, and a pile of dirty clothes that clearly belonged to a young woman had been kicked into a corner. From the rumpled corners of shirts and inside-out jeans that she could see, it all looked like stuff she would wear. Noelle took a closer look at the desk. Beside the laptop, someone had laid a knife in a leather sheath, with a pentagram carved onto the hilt. She recognized it… or rather, she knew that she should recognize it.

She turned to Muriel. "Where are we?" she asked.

Muriel's only response was a nod toward the door, which sounded with two soft knocks seconds later.

"Come in," Noelle said automatically.

It slid open quietly and a sandy blonde head poked in. He was wearing sunglasses, despite the fact that they were inside, despite the fact that it seemed to be the middle of the night. "Sorry," the boy who belonged to the head told her, smiling a little. "Uh, insomnia again. You mind if I crash here?"

"No, of course not," replied Noelle warmly. She didn't know this boy, but she did. She knew him better than anyone. "You know that, Adam."

Adam grinned at her and shut the door behind him, his movements controlled and careful as he picked his way across her messy floor with a white cane. They didn't want anyone to hear him sneak over to her room, after all. He knew where every discarded book and dirty pair of jeans was, and stepped over them expertly. "Thanks," he said. _And if I ever saw you, I didn't catch your name… _"As much fun as I'm having with our through-the-vents courtship and everything, doesn't really help me sleep."

"Don't say courtship, it makes me picture you in, like, tights and britches. It's an uncomfortable image."

Adam laughed and sat down on her bed. She followed suit, relieving him of his cane and leaning against his shoulder to breathe in the smell of him. He smelled like Dove soap and something uniquely Adam, a fresh, clean smell that made Noelle want to wrap him up in her arms and just breathe him in forever. "Besides," she continued against the fabric of his shirt, "for it to be courtship, you're supposed to ask permission first."

"Hey, it's not like we're hiding it," said Adam. "I just don't want to get yelled at by Mama Moffat again."

Noelle shuddered. "God, that was terrifying."

"Yeah, I'll say." Adam kissed her cheek, his lips lingering there as he said, "Babe, if I don't pass out now, I never will."

"Then go to sleep," she murmured. _Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart…_

He smiled at her and kissed her on the mouth this time, a sweet, loving kiss that left her slightly breathless not from desire but from the amount of love she felt for this boy in front of her. As he stood up, kicking off his jeans and crawling into her bed in his T-shirt and boxers, Noelle stood up and looked over at Muriel, who was perched on top of her desk.

"The hell is going on?" Noelle asked, quite amiably, given the circumstances. Kissing and cuddling with a boy she didn't know, who then decided go to sleep in her bed that was not her bed (she didn't think)… all of this might make someone else a little pissy. But she felt remarkably calm.

"This is one of the stops on the Road of Adam's Heaven," said Muriel, gesturing towards Adam, who had laid his sunglasses on her nightstand and rolled over. He slept on his stomach with one arm beneath the pillow and the other laying across the empty side of the twin bed as if someone approximately Noelle-sized were laying there beside him. He didn't seem to hear either of them. "No, you are not dead," she added before Noelle could speak, clearly sensing her next question. "And Adam is not in Heaven. This is just… a replay, if you will. He has already experienced this and I am just bringing you here to show you."

"Do I know him?" Noelle asked.

"No. Not yet."

"But he's… dead. Right now. Even though he's not in Heaven. Isn't he?"

"Yes, he is dead. But he will not be dead much longer."

"But if I haven't met him, how can he have already experienced this?"

Muriel smiled softly. "Adam's life is unique. He has died twice and been resurrected once, and will soon be resurrected again. Because of this, his Heaven is composed of moments from his past as well as his future. Because he was one of the few who still had a future when he arrived in Heaven. His brothers' Roads led to their futures as well… not that either of them remained long enough to find this out."

With no clue how to react, Noelle just said, "Oh. Right. Adam's brothers." She wanted to crawl into bed with Adam and just… fall asleep. And hopefully wake up in a place where things made sense. Maybe with Adam next to her. The part of her that had already fallen in love with him didn't seem to realize or care that he was a total stranger.

"This is crucial, Noelle," said Muriel. "You make up a significant portion of Adam's Heaven. When you die, he will be much of yours as well. Remember this."

"Remember this for what?" Noelle asked helplessly.

"For what is to come. You and Adam must be together."

"_Why?"_

"When you wake up, it'll all be clear again." Muriel reached up again. "You will remember yourself. Rest now. I don't think it will be long." Before Noelle could protest, Muriel had pressed her fingers to her brow again. Paul McCartney's voice and the sight of Adam lying in her bed like he belonged there (because he did, dammit, and everything about this was perfect) both faded away, and she drifted again. _Oh, you know I will, I will…_

#

_"The next thousand Tuesdays were more than Sam thought he could handle. Every day, he woke up to that stupid fucking Asia song and wished for death – his own death. One sentence played on a loop through his head: How am I going to watch my brother die today? He found himself staring at Dean to the point where his brother threw in some cheeky remark about pictures lasting longer, trying to savor every single second until Dean was crushed, smashed into, electrocuted, or any of the other terrible fates Sam had seen-"_

"What the fuck are you reading to me?" mumbled a hoarse, sluggish voice that Cas had not heard since Noelle vanished from the motel room to go help Sam and Dean raid a vampires' nest.

He snapped the paperback shut without bothering to dog-ear his page, tugging his chair so close to Noelle's bed that he thought he might upset his leg by accident. "Noelle!" he cried, grinning in relief. She blinked at him, her eyes never opening all the way, casting her gaze about blearily. "Noelle, look at me."

She did, turning her head. And then sat bolt upright.

"Holy son of god – there was – fuck! Raphael! Fuck! Cas!" She turned wild eyes on him, pale face surrounded by her shock of wild hair. It made her look almost comical, but Cas was so glad to see her awake at all that he couldn't spare her appearance two thoughts. "You – you're… you're wearing _clothes._ Real ones."

Noelle's change of manner, from panicked to pensive, gave him pause, but he ignored that as well. "Uh, yes."

"And… you're reading to me, and you're… conscious. Wait, you _fell out of the sky_, how come you're not all…" Noelle waved her arms about vaguely, as if searching the air for the word she wanted and, not finding it, settled on, "…broken?"

"Well, I've had over a month to recuperate from it," said Cas carefully, watching Noelle's face for a reaction.

Realization dawned slowly. "Oh – oh hell no. No way was I out for a month."

"Noelle, it's February second. You were in a coma for more than five weeks."

"It's February?" Noelle's eyes were wide. They traveled up to meet Castiel's own, and held. "Can… can I ask you something?"

"Anything." Cas folded her hand between both of his.

Noelle wet her lips. "On what _planet_ is hearing about Dean getting killed over and over again supposed to be bedside reading?"

For a moment, Cas could only look at her, slightly thrown. When she raised her eyebrows, actually expecting an answer, he started laughing, leaning forward and giving her a short hug.

"Hey – whoa. Hugging. Um, you. _Hugging_. Are you drunk or something?" Noelle demanded. "_Christo_."

"Very funny." Still fighting mirth, Cas sat back in his chair. He was not drunk – he wasn't quite awake, because it was early, but he was not drunk. Or possessed. And here sat Noelle, looking quite bemused, as if she thought she might wake up from a strange dream at any moment. He declined to mention that confused though she was, she had still hugged him back. "I'm not a demon, Noelle, I'm… well, you remember. Ithuriel."

"Right…" Noelle's face melted into compassion. "I'm so sorry, Cas. If I ever see that little shit again, I'm serving his wings for the fucking Superbowl. Extra fucking spicy. I… I'm so sorry I couldn't… do anything…"

Cas shook his head, amazed. Noelle fit right in with the Winchesters. Here she sat in a hospital bed after five weeks of unconsciousness, pale, probably still quite confused. And she was apologizing. "Noelle," he said, "I do hope you realize that you saved my life. I would be dead if you hadn't… somehow sprouted wings."

Noelle grinned weakly. "So, you don't know how I did it?"

"Gabriel had an explanation," Cas murmured. He felt a bitter flare of resentment for his brother – not that he had any right to think of Gabriel or any others that way anymore – and tried to suppress it. "He believes that your grace was not strong enough to do it, so it leeched some of the power of your soul."

"My soul…" A faraway look wiped Noelle's face clean of expression. A little worried, Cas put his hand on her shoulder.

"Noelle?"

"I feel like… I don't know. I guess I had a dream about souls, or something." She shrugged, touching her knuckles to her forehead. "My brain's fuzzy."

"Where are Sam and Dean?"

"Hunting," said Cas. "Dean said it's…" A faint flutter of wings made him pause for a second, glancing around the room as Noelle raised an eyebrow at him. It sounded like the slightly smaller, chubbier wings of a cherub. Someone in the hospital must have been marked to fall in love – or Cas was just losing his mind. Either was a very real possibility. "Dean said it's just a salt-and-burn, they'll be back this evening."

"Why aren't you with them?"

He motioned towards the cast still wrapped around his leg, but immediately wished he hadn't. Noelle leaned heavily back in the bed, letting a harsh breath through her teeth in frustration. "This isn't your fault," he reminded her.

"Yes it _is_! If I'd figured my shit out before – if – if I'd been able to get away from Samuel on my own, Gabriel could have saved you." She turned away. Cas noticed with some disappointment her hands were trembling again. He'd hoped that when she woke up, they would be steadier. "Everything's even friggin' worse than it was when I first bit the stupid apple."

"Noelle…"

"No – he ripped out your grace, Cas, and I was right there, and I just stood there and bawled." She was close to tears now, pressing her hands to her eyes so fiercely that Cas feared she would black one of them by accident. "And if I hadn't – they wouldn't have even taken you if I weren't in the picture, if those demons had just killed me when they killed Christian, this is all my—"

"Stop." It was the sound of his old commanding tone of voice, he was sure, that made Noelle look up, fighting the tears back before they could roll down her face. He hated to use it when there was no force behind it, but he could not listen to Noelle blame herself for what had happened. He could not watch her torture herself as if it were Dean sitting in the hospital bed and not Noelle. He would not let her become as broken as Dean, because if he had to live with the knowledge that not just one, but two people he loved hated themselves even more than they hated Lucifer, he did not think he would be able to do it. "This was not your fault. Stop, Noelle. Please. Forgive yourself if you believe it's forgiveness you need, but you won't get it from me, because there is nothing to forgive."

Noelle narrowed her wet, red eyes, but didn't speak.

He accepted that, and for her sake, changed the subject. "There's something you should know before Sam and Dean get back. Well, a few things."

"Okay…"

"Dean retrieved Sam's soul," he explained, "with some help from Death."

"Death as in… like, mack-daddy of Reapers Death, old-as-God Death?"

"That's the one."

"So, Sam's a real boy again?" Noelle sat up straighter, her voice still a little wet, but the tears gone. Cas almost wished she would cry. "Is he, like, okay?"

"He has no memories of anything after jumping into Hell," Cas said. He considered relaying the couple of attacks Sam had had over the past month, flashbacks to his time in Hell, but decided that such information could wait until Noelle had had a little time to adjust. "Death blocked them off from his conscious mind."

"So, to him, I'm some random kid you guys picked up," said Noelle flatly.

"Not exactly. The situation has been explained to him. I think everything will be better than you seem to think, Noelle. Also, uh…" He rubbed the back of his neck. "About Dean…"

"What about him? Is he – he's okay, right?"

"He's fine, he's fine," Cas said quickly, but now that he actually had to explain it, the words failed him. Noelle watched him, her pale face anxious. "He's just… we're, um… Dean and I…" he trailed off, hoping Noelle would just understand.

She seemed to. A grin split her face. "I knew it. You're wearing his jacket, after all." Which was true; Dean's green cargo jacket was warmer than his own and he had taken to stealing it whenever Dean opted for his leather one. "Well, congratulations, loverboy. I'm glad you guys stopped pretending you haven't been madly in love since before I friggin' met you."

"Thank you?"

Noelle smiled again. "Oh, one more thing?"

"Anything."

"If you haven't brought me a pack of cigarettes, you're dead to me."

_Yes, Muriel was a big fan of season four, "raised-you-from-perdition" Cas. And I based her appearance on Dakota Fanning's character from _Push. _It was a sub-par film, but I love Dakota, and she looked super cute in it._


	15. Patients and Orphans

**YES, IT IS A NEW CHAPTER. I AM SO SORRY. If y'all've stopped reading, well, I deserve it. Feeble explanations at the bottom.**

**Chapter Fifteen  
**

**Patients and Orphans  
**

Before very long, Cas remembered that he was supposed to get a doctor or nurse the second that Noelle woke up. Seeing as he had been given these instructions five weeks ago, he forgave himself the lapse in judgement and headed off to the waiting room, after pressing Noelle's hand once more between his own and promising her that he would be back as soon as he was allowed. She had punched his arm with her left hand, the one attached to the unbroken wrist, and assured him that she was a big girl now and she could handle a check-up without him hovering over her. Noelle needed a CAT scan and blood tests and a whole host of other things that Cas knew that he should have at least tried to remember, but the phrases just went in one ear and out the other. The business of fixing broken humans was shockingly complex. He wished he could have shown Uriel, or even Lucifer. _Look,_ he would have said, _these creatures you find so inferior have such intricate makeup, so much that goes into them and so much _to _them._ A proud angel could twist it into another excuse to see humans as weak, but Castiel, when he _had _been Castiel, had seen only another reason to love them.

He pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and speed-dialed Dean, breathing a sigh of relief when the hunter picked up after only one ring.

"Yeah?"

"Dean, Noelle is awake."

He heard a slight shuffling sound that meant Dean had almost dropped the phone. "She is? Thank fucking Christ. Is she – you know – all there?"

"She appears to be. They're doing tests now, but she seemed completely herself. She threatened to disown me if I didn't bring her cigarettes."

"Yeah, Evie's just fine," Dean muttered, his fondness for her seeping through the cell phone waves connecting their voices and ears. "SAMMY!" Cas's ears rang. "You done out there?" Sam's reply was lost to the distance between him and Dean's phone, but Dean continued, "Well finish, Noelle's up! Sorry Cas, Sammy's loading the Impala. We'll be back in a couple hours, okay?"

"Of course," replied Cas.

#

Noelle had never wondered what being attended to simultaneously by Dr. Sexy and Nurse Ratched would be like, but if anyone ever put the question to her, she would be able to answer. The head trauma specialist in charge of her case displayed just the right cocktail of rugged good looks, overly dramatic demeanor, and arrogance to land himself a spinoff series or something; all he lacked was a pair of cowboy boots. The nurse… Noelle wished it were Raphael coming into her room every time her door opened to admit the woman. At least with him, opening up a vein and painting a sigil on the wall would rid her of the unwanted company instead of getting her sent back to the loony bin.

Then again, if she did get tossed back into the cuckoo's nest, it probably wouldn't be long before another demon came by. This one would be in the form of a giraffe, probably. His name would be Sulfury and she would eventually learn that the whole ugly process of Cas getting his grace shanked was actually an elaborate plan to get Noelle to lick Job's Forbidden Lollipop or something. Well, hopefully it would be something less suggestive. And less Apocalyptic than, say, eating from the Tree of Knowledge. But hey.

She was going insane with boredom. Cas wasn't allowed back in her room until the boys got there, because according to Nurse Ratched and her saccharine smile, Noelle needed her rest. She had tried her best not to shout as she explained that she wouldn't be able to _get _any rest if Cas wasn't there with her, but stopped before explaining why. Something told her that her nurse wouldn't take it too seriously if Noelle said that she was glad Cas was alive at all and spending as much time with him as possible would really set her mind at ease, especially since she wanted to make sure he's adjusting to the whole "not an angel anymore and suddenly in a relationship with an emotionally dysfunctional man" thing. Oh yeah. Perfectly sane girl right here. How about I tell you about the time I walked right into a vampire's arms just because I was horny and lonely and scared, and then we can have a nice little chat about how I bring death and destruction wherever I go? How I make big brothers drop dead and angels lose their wings, and if I put one toe out of line, the Devil walks? How if I could just fucking reach all the knowledge that's supposed to be in my head for longer than twenty seconds, maybe I could stop all this insanity?

Noelle wanted to bang her head against the wall, but she didn't think the boys would react well if they came into her room only to find she'd gone and dropped off into another coma because she couldn't sit and twiddle her thumbs like a normal person.

It felt like days later when her door finally opened, but Noelle knew it was only hours. Still, she vaulted out of her bed without bothering to turn off the _Days of Our Lives_ rerun the second Dean's shoulders cleared the door, and threw her arms around him. A split second passed where she wanted to strangle herself – _good work, Noelle, why don't you just start wearing pigtails and pink bows and a name tag that says "Hello, my name is Noelle and apparently I'm FIVE" – _but Dean was hugging her back the second she reached him, one of his strong arms wrapped around her waist and the other holding her head to his shoulder. He smelled like leather and gunpowder and a desperate need for a shower, and for a few seconds, Noelle felt the long stretch of the weeks she had spent unconscious. It felt like years since she had seen Dean.

Almost at the same time as she did, Dean appeared to decide the moment was over, and they stepped away from each other, Noelle running a mortified five fingers through her hair. She probably needed a therapist to help her deal with her friggin' abandonment issues. Then again, every hunter Noelle had met since she first fell in with her boys needed a therapist, including Castiel, both pre- and post-human. Maybe there should be another branch of hunters in the world, specializing in keeping the field branch sane. Dr. Hunter Shrink, M.D. It could be a Dr. Sexy spinoff.

"Jesus, am I glad to see you mobile," Dean muttered, clearing his throat. "So. Uh, Real Sam, I'd like you to meet Noelle. Noelle, Real Sam."

Noelle looked up (way, way up) at Sam, and immediately did not recognize him. He was wearing the same meat-suit, and his clothes were pretty much standard Sam Winchester threads, and there was some thin tape holding a scratch across his temple closed (although new injuries were nothing strange on any of them), but it was a different person. His eyes were no longer blank, sarcastic beams but honey-colored pools that looked at her apologetically, and with a little bit of nervousness. There was a softness about his mouth and forehead that Noelle had never seen before. Hell, even the way he was standing was different – not using his intimidating bulk to dominate the room but hunching his big shoulders a little, as if to try and make himself smaller, for her sake, like he knew just how big a presence he was both figuratively and literally. Noelle now understood Bobby's insistence that Sam's puppy dog eyes could make Dean bend over backwards.

He held out his hand. "Hi, Noelle. I, uh… hope I wasn't too huge a dick to you."

Noelle felt a grin spread across her mouth and shook his massive hand. "Hi, Sam. It's all forgotten. It wasn't you."

A spark of an old argument flitted across his face, like he did not agree, but no one wanted to have that conversation now. Instead, Dean broke the silence by picking up the paperback book lying on the table beside Noelle's bed. "_Mystery Spot?" _he demanded of Castiel, who had hung back in the door frame, his hands buried in the pockets of his un-Cas-like jeans in a very un-Cas-like slouch.

"I told you, I hoped hearing about you two would help bring her around," said Cas calmly. Noelle wished she had not spent the past five weeks flitting around in dreamland, because she wanted to know everything. Why Dean had decided to seek out the king of the Reapers to get back Sam's soul – it sounded like a last ditch effort to her, too desperate a move to have been done with a clear head. Why Sam was looking at her intently, as if he had just remembered that his soulless self had spent the entire five months she'd been with them kicking her puppy or something. Why Cas looked so completely different, as if some of his personality had been yanked out of him along with his grace and he was trying to fill the hole it left with the casual attitude so characteristic of Dean when he was trying to pretend everything was fine.

She felt like she had missed everything important. Like she didn't only have to get to know the newly-returned Sam 1.0 and forget Sam 2.0, but now there was this new Castiel with whom to acquaint herself as well.

Sam looked like he wanted to say something to her, and Noelle was eager to hear it, to better get to know this new guy, the brother that Dean went to Hell for rather than the shell of a man she'd come to know and rather dislike, respect but fear. But Dr. Sexy (she would learn his name before she was discharged, it was just rude not to) opened the door at that moment.

"I'm here to check your vitals, Noelle," he said, with the air of someone telling her that he was here to resurrect her brother from the dead and un-weird her life.

"Sure thing, doc," she said. "So, when am I allowed out of here? I need a cigarette like you wouldn't believe." He opened his mouth, undoubtedly to recite the list of Harmful Effects of Smoking Cigarettes, but Noelle flashed him a glare that made him swallow his sermon. She had a feeling she looked a lot creepier than she realized.

"No giving doctors heart attacks," said Dean absently. "Just let him do his thing. Seriously, though, doc, when can she come home?"

"After the tests, if she checks out, we can send her back," said Dr. Sexy, wrapping a pressure cuff around her arm, which she did not immediately realize was her arm. It was a lot paler and more twiggish than she recalled her arms as being. She made a mental note to start working out more.

"Come on, I've been here five weeks," she whined. "I want to leave _now_."

"Noelle," said the doctor sternly, "We need to make sure—"

"Yeah, yeah, do your thing," she muttered.

Luckily, she was out of the hospital in another two hours, walking ahead of the boys with a spring in her step, completely unbothered by the ache in her cast-wrapped wrist and only mildly horrified by the sight of Castiel wobbling around on his crutches. As disconcerting as it was to see him needing something as utterly mundane as a pair of crutches, wearing Dean's jacket and years-old AC/DC shirt and not his patented Castiel outfit, it was all just too weird for Noelle to really process. She was worried about him, but the wonder of having missed more than a month as if she were just crashing after a night of partying made simple things huge distractions, and even her worry for their guardian angel couldn't occupy her mind on its own for more than thirty seconds. The parking lot, the rumble of cars on the road, everything seemed like it was from some long-lost planet Noelle had known as a child. As they crossed the parking lot, the hood of the Impala came into her sight, and Noelle grinned, pressing her hand against the headlight.

"Hey, Mama!" she said fondly. "I'm alive, didja miss me?"

"She sure as hell didn't miss your damn smoke," said Dean, watching her remove a cigarette from the pack Castiel had handed her and lighting up with a deep breath and a lazy, content grin.

"You _all_ did, and you know it," she said, cracking one eye open. "I can finish it before we hit the road, if you're that anal about it."

Grudgingly, Dean let her into the car with the cigarette lit, and they started off for their motel room, the same one out of which Noelle had teleported to catch Castiel as he fell from the sky. She tried not to dwell on this, and instead amused herself by blowing smoke at Cas when he wasn't looking. As Dean drove, the boys were taking it in turns to regale her with the trials and tribulations of the past five weeks, most notably poor Sam walking in while Dean and Cas were being intimate ("Guys, seriously, this is like hearing about someone walking in on your _parents_. Stop fucking talking.") and a suspicious ritual that the brothers had crashed before it could be finished.

"What did the ritual consist of, though?" she asked, tossing her cigarette butt out the window.

"We don't know, that's the thing," said Sam. Noelle was still getting used to the way he spoke – no cool sarcasm or careless flippancy, but with a note of warmth to his voice that she doubted he even noticed. "They came to us, we never saw what exactly they were doing."

"So, how do I know what to meditate on?" Noelle asked frankly.

"We don't think you do," replied Dean. "We're not too optimistic about this."

"Awesome," Noelle said. "Really awesome. So basically, we won't know what they were planning until we get smacked over the head with it."

"In a nutshell."

"So we'll be about as prepared as we usually are."

"Looks that way."

Noelle nodded. "Has Crowley shown his ugly face?"

"Nope," said Dean, looking pleased. "And hopefully he won't, now that he has no leverage."

"And Samuel?"

"MIA, Evie. We got nothing to worry about."

Noelle nodded, debating whether to ask after the next person on her list, then added quietly, "Gregory?"

Dean shrugged. "No idea. He's probably found another nest by now, if there are any left."

"Good," she mumbled before she could shut herself up. Sam looked at her quizzically, but she pretended not to notice, focusing instead on the radio, which was pouring a slow Beatles song from its speakers. _Will I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to, I will._

She blinked, hard, completely unprepared for the surge of emotion that accompanied the tune. Clearly, she needed a couple more "biting back emotions" lessons after having been out of the game for so long. "So," she said loudly, "where do we go from here?"

"Well, now that you're up and about, we're going to take off to Bobby's," said Dean. "We were gonna go anyway, but he told us there's some hunter family who may be able to help us."

"A hunter family? Like the Campbells?"

"Hopefully a little, uh, friendlier," said Dean darkly. "Bobby wouldn't give us any details, he wanted to tell all of us at the same time. We're gonna head back to the motel once we're finished here, then first thing in the morning we're going to Sioux Falls. You need some R and R anyway—"

"Dude, I'm on the ass-end of five nonstop weeks of R and R, it's the last thing I want," Noelle disagreed. "Besides – what exactly does Bobby think they can help us with? With getting Cas's battery back, or with my whole impotence issue, or Crowley, or—"

"He didn't say," Cas interrupted. "I doubt anyone can get my grace back, Noelle. It would be foolish to try. Gabriel told me as much when I first woke up."

"Gabriel, huh? He showed up again?"

"Yes, once," said Cas shortly, his face giving Noelle the distinct impression that Dean had been giving him glaring lessons while she was out. she dropped the subject obligingly and tried to swallow the bitter taste that guilt was leaving in her mouth.

"Okay, so what does Bobby want to tell us?" she asked.

"We'll find out tomorrow," Dean said.

The Impala pulled up to the parking lot of their motel. Inside, the room looked strange. Noelle was used to walking into the motel room they were staying in, and immediately seeing evidence of her tenancy – her dirty clothes scattered on the floor and her combat boots tossed into corners and her burnt-out incense sticks in their holders on the bedside table. But they had put all of her things back in her suitcase, and the only indication that she was staying in the room was her physical presence. Realistically, Noelle couldn't be hurt at this, since it just made _sense _for them to pack up her stuff until she woke up, but she couldn't help but feel like they had just swept her under the rug. She gave herself a mental slap in the face, telling herself sternly not to be such a baby, and hooked a foot into the handle of her suitcase to drag it out from its spot in the corner.

"So, I'm assuming Sam sleeps now," she said. "And Cas. So… arrangements?"

"Cas and I'll take the floor," said Dean chivalrously. Noelle considered asking whether they were sleeping together, but immediately decided against it. Dean would assume she meant "Are you fucking?" when she was just curious whether or not they had actually shared a bed, but she figured she'd find out sooner or later.

And she really didn't want to think about Dean and Cas having sex. It was way weird.

"Thanks," she said. "If you guys don't mind, I think I'm going to pass out now."

"You don't want us to grab some takeout?"

"No, no, I just want to go to sleep."

She did so, changing into a pair of pajama shorts and tank top in the bathroom and slipping into the bed further from the door; ever since the first night she had spent with them, the boys had insisted that she sleep as far from the door as the beds permitted. At the time, she'd felt too timid to do much but smile awkwardly, nod, and do whatever they told her, but as she lived with them for longer and longer, she just dealt with the fact that they were probably going to be overprotective of her until the day she died.

Noelle snuggled as close to the pillow as she could. She had slept in queen-sized beds for the past five months (six, if she counted her five weeks in a coma, which didn't really count, especially since that bed had been anything but), and had become used to it, but tonight, the bed felt way too empty, for some reason. She tried to ignore it, but the space beside her begged to be filled, begged to have someone lie beside her so she could rest her face in his neck and feel his arms around her.

She chalked it up to her long, unconscious absence and decided tomorrow she'd give Cas a hug or something to make up for the five weeks without physical contact, but if the two angels standing beside her bed had not cloaked themselves from sight, she might not have.

#

The angel closer to Noelle's pillow gazed at her with a melancholy look on her young face. The other was not looking at Noelle at all, but at Castiel, who kept glancing up as if hearing someone call his name, but his eyes bypassed both of them every time he looked in their direction.

"Are you sure this is right?" he asked his companion. His vessel was a tall, somewhat gawky boy in his mid teens. Something about the boy had obviously sparked the angel's fondness, for under his arm he carried a skateboard that presumably belonged to his vessel, as if he hadn't had the heart to abandon it. "Perhaps Nisroc is wrong."

"Nisroc has gone to great lengths to make sure that Raphael trusts him," said Muriel. "And if Raphael is to be thwarted, Adam Milligan must be saved. Nisroc would not tell us to do this if he thought he might be mistaken."

"I'd love to save Adam Milligan, but why can we not do it ourselves?" asked the boy-angel. "Cas would not want Noelle to go through what Nisroc says is necessary."

"Castiel would not want Raphael to restart the Apocalypse, either," said Muriel.

"I don't see why we can't at least tell Cas."

"He'll try to stop us, Xaphan."

"Maybe we need to be stopped."

"I don't like it either, but matches have been made for the greater good before."

"I'm not talking about the match. Honestly, they both deserve happiness after everything they've been through. I'm talking about the method Nisroc proposes of raising Adam from Hell, and you know it."

Muriel sighed. "You know why it has to be her."

Xaphan dropped his skateboard onto the floor and stepped onto it, glancing wistfully at Castiel, whose head turned in their direction again, as if he had heard the noise. "I don't like it."

"This is war, brother," said Muriel firmly. "It doesn't matter whether or not we like it."

"Cas would—"

"Xaphan!" snapped Muriel. "Castiel is our older brother and I love him as well as you do, but what he wants does not matter any longer. You know what would have happened had we not called him away from Dean Winchester that day over a year ago. You know what the demon Crowley would have persuaded him to do. You know what he would have become."

"That's not relevant right now."

"Of course it is." Muriel fixed her amber eyes on him. "Castiel is not infallible. We cannot plan our strategies based on what he would or would not want, we cannot take his word as gospel, we cannot trust him to know what to do, not after he let the humans come before the greater good. We've been through this. We must do this without him."

Xaphan rocked his weight slightly on his skateboard, looking at Castiel again. "Anna would be proud of him."

"Stop being so sentimental. You're acting like she did. Like Gabriel does."

"Is that such a bad thing?" Xaphan asked bitterly. "We've got this all wrong, Muriel. Cas proved that to us the moment he returned to Heaven. You're still so _dutiful_, you still act according to our Father, even though we're orphans."

"We are not orphans. Our Father is somewhere."

"I don't think God brought Cas back."

"He was dead," said Muriel shortly. "We all felt it. None but our Father could have brought him back, and he did it for one reason. Our Father's will is that we should fight Raphael, and that is what I am doing."

"With your logic, we should be following Cas, Muriel!"

"And until he lost his grace, we were." Muriel fixed her eyes upon her brother. "If God wanted us to continue following him, he would not have allowed Raphael to remove his grace. We are doing God's work. Please, let's not fight, brother. There is so much fighting already."

Xaphan made no reply, but he glanced at his sister as if wishing to embrace her. They stood before Noelle's bed, Muriel studying her sleeping face and Xaphan angled towards their former brother, wishing he could reach out and let Castiel know they were there. Before long, Dean Winchester's arm came around Castiel's shoulders and Sam Winchester sat at the desk to face them. They spoke of Bobby Singer.

**Okay. So I've been working like crazy on my original stuff, dealing with fucktons of stress at school and work, and I also went so long without updating that I had to go even LONGER because I had to remember the email address I used for this account. Which I had forgotten. Because I am a disorganized wreck. Yikes. None of this excuses not updating, but I just figured I'd throw it out there anyway.**


End file.
